Survey of Class 3 students to set baseline for literacy goals

Mission calls for use of mother tongue in early education.

The Centre’s NIPUN Bharat Mission has set a goal that by 2026-27, every Class 3 child should be able to read with understanding at the rate of at least 60 words per minute, be able to read and write numbers up to 9999 and solve simple multiplication problems. For this purpose, ₹2,688 crore has been set aside under the existing Samagra Shiksha scheme for 2021-22, said Education Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank at the launch of the mission on Monday. A National Achievement Survey of Class 3 students to be conducted this November will set a baseline to track future progress. “Until grade 3, children are expected to ‘learn to read’ and acquire basic skills. After grade 3 children are expected to be able to ‘read to learn’. If this does not happen, the learning gap continues to widen from that point, as the texts in the language textbooks and mathematical concepts become more complex and abstract in later grades,” said the NIPUN Bharat guidelines. “Thus, grade 3 is the inflection point and this is where children who have not made it, get left behind.”