National Steering Committee for implementation of the NIPUN Bharat Mission set up

The National Initiative for Proficiency in Reading with Understanding and Numeracy, (NIPUN) Bharat Mission launched by Ministry of Education’s Department of School Education and Literacy on July 5 this year, gets a committee to steer its implementation.

As prescribed in the Mission guidelines, a National Steering Committee (NSC) for implementation of the NIPUN Bharat Mission has been constituted on 25^thOctober, 2021 under the chairpersonship of the Union Education Minister, Dharmendra Pradhan with  Minister of State for Education, Annpurna Devi as its Vice Chairpersonship.

The other members of the NSC include: Secretary, School Education & Literacy; Director NCERT; Vice Chancellor NIEPA; Chairperson NCTE; Secretary Education Uttar Pradesh; Secretary Education, Karnataka; Director SCERT Gujarat; Director SCERT Sikkim; Representatives of 7 Union Ministries i.e., Women and Child Development, Tribal Affairs, Social Justice and Empowerment, Health and Family Welfare, Finance, Electronics and Information Technology and Panchayati Raj; Two Experts from NCERT and RIE Ajmer; and Three External Experts. The Joint Secretary and Mission Director NIPUN Bharat Mission is the convenor for the NSC.

The mission has been started with the aim to achieve the goal of universal proficiency in foundational literacy and numeracy for every child by grade 3, as envisaged by National Education Policy 2020. Now with the NSC, a focus on implementation comes as a logical step.

Broadly the roles and responsibilities of the NSC for the NIUPN Bharat Mission that have been mentioned by a statement of the Ministry are:

1. To oversee the progress of National Mission on Foundational Literacy and Numeracy and provide guidance on policy issues.
2. To arrive at the target to be achieved nationally in 2026-27.
3. To disseminate tools for measurement of yearly progress in the form of guidelines.
4. To prepare and approve a National Action Plan (based on the State’s Action Plans) with KRAs for every State/UT vis-à-vis factors attributable for the gaps (i.e., lack of Fund, Vacancies, Teachers, Demography, Local issues, Need of Training for teachers, Curriculum & pedagogy related).
5. To review programmatic and financial norms periodically to ensure they are synchronised with targets to be achieved.
6. To develop methodology of assessment to analyse the progress and provide feedback to States/UTs.