States are working in mission mode for Foundational Literacy and Numeracy (FLN) to achieve student learning outcomes, a leading non-profit organisation working in the primary and pre-primary education sector in India said here on Monday.

The Central Square Foundation (CSF) convened a roundtable discussion to share progress made by different states in their respective FLN missions, and how EdTech is being leveraged to support learning in classrooms and at-home.

The CSF, based out of New Delhi, has been working for close to 12 years in the sector of Foundational Literacy and Numeracy (FLN), Educational Technology (EdTech) for Bharat to support at-home learning & Early Childhood Education (ECE), and School Governance.

CSF efforts are actively supporting at least 70 per cent of all school-going children in primary grades in terms of designing and implementing NIPUN programmes.

Shaveta Sharma-Kukreja, CEO and MD of CSF, emphasised the need to accelerate and sustain India’s journey towards FLN.

She said, “The clarion call for achieving FLN was raised by Prime Minister Narendra Modi two years ago. We at CSF are committed to supporting States governments with necessary mechanisms to deepen the FLN reforms in their respective States. To that need, we are supporting states in ensuring they are developing protocols around balancing the learning needs of students with capacity building of academic resources.”

With a commitment to reshaping the education sector in India, CSF has partnered with governments across 11 states to implement interventions that are research-driven, thereby ensuring an improvement of learning outcomes with the help of technology aided-monitoring.

While gross school enrolment rates are over 100 per cent in schools in rural India, the reality is that schooling is not leading to learning outcomes being met. Findings from the recent Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2022 indicate how 80 per cent of Grade 3 students in rural India are unable to read simple Grade 2-level text. Moreover 74 per cent children are not able to perform basic subtraction. This underscores the urgent need to bridge the learning gaps.

CSF is working collaboratively with a few first-movers, which includes states like Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and Telangana. In Haryana for instance, the NIPUN Haryana mission has ensured that academic resource materials (in the form of teacher guides and student workbooks) have been delivered on time. Mobile apps are being used for monitoring student learning outcomes for over 4.69 lakh students enrolled in government schools in the State, including classroom teaching-learning practices. In Uttar Pradesh, the State education department has set up Vidya Samiksha Kendras (VSKs) under its ambitious NIPUN UP mission for regular monitoring of schools with a call center unit for regular tracking.

In Telangana, the State’s FLN Mission – Tholimettu – is geared towards conducting regular spot assessments of teaching quality in the classrooms and sharing feedback with academic mentors as part of its overall framework of supportive supervision.