Ministry of Education to conduct a 'Foundational Learning Study'

The Ministry of Education will be conducting a ‘foundational learning study’ in order to draw a first-hand understanding of the learning levels of the students at the foundational learning stage (at the end of Grade 3).

• The study is first of its kind in the world as it aims to set-up benchmarks for reading with comprehension in 22 Indian languages.
• The Foundational Learning Study will be conducted by the NCERT in all States and UTs over a window of four days i.e., 23rd, to 26th March, 2022 in the sampled schools. Approximately, 10000 schools and 1 lakh students are expected to participate in this study.

The specific objectives of the foundational learning study are as follows:

• To conduct a large-scale assessment of the foundational learning of grade 3 students to establish a baseline for the NIPUN Bharat mission.
• To establish reading proficiency benchmarks for fluency with comprehension for each of the languages being assessed under the study.
• To provide the data for SDG 4.1.1. (Covering aspects of foundational literacy and numeracy).

NEP 2020 & NIPUN Bharat

• The National Education Policy 2020 highlights that “the ability to read and write, and perform basic operations with numbers, is a necessary foundation and an indispensable prerequisite for all future schooling and lifelong learning”.
• Ministry of Education (MoE), has launched the ‘National Initiative for Proficiency in Reading with Understanding and Numeracy’ (NIPUN- BHARAT) mission to provide the roadmap for strengthening the domain of foundational learning at the national level.
• The Foundational Learning study will enable to establish benchmarks in reading with comprehension in different Indian languages for children at Grade 3 level. It will assess the ability to read age-appropriate known as well as unknown text at a certain pace, accurately, and with comprehension and also the foundational numeracy skills and form a baseline for the NIPUN Bharat Goals.