One of the most important goals under NEP 2020 is to achieve universal foundational literacy and numeracy in primary schools by the year 2025. The Ministry of Education started the National Initiative for Proficiency in Reading with Understanding and Numeracy (NIPUN) Bharat in July 2021. The goal is to enable children to attain basic foundational skills by the time they reach Class III. The Ministry aims to achieve this by 2026-27.
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Pratham’s Leader Mother for NIPUN Maharashtra programme
Pratham, an NGO established in 1995, has been working to bridge the gaps left by the education system by coming up with scaleable practical interventions. Programmes run by Pratham in the area of Early Childhood Education targeting children between the ages of three and eight aligned with the goals of the NIPUN Bharat Mission. This has resulted in a partnership between the government and the NGO.
One such programme harnesses the power of community, by keeping mothers at the centre of the model. Smitin, the Programme Director of Pratham’s Early Childhood Education says, “We came up with this model called ‘mothers’ groups’ at the hamlet level.” The NGO creates video-based and other educational content which is approved by SCERT and sent to government school teachers who pass it to the mothers.
A group of five mothers living in the same vicinity and whose children study at the same school meet once weekly in a group to discuss these videos, carry out the activities together and then replicate it with their children at home. Smitin says there are 3,00,000 groups active currently in Maharashtra. These groups have a ‘leader mother’—usually someone with access to a smartphone.
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The group-based model allows the women to meet, and discuss things with each other, thus creating a local support system. Smitin calls the mothers “the first respondents to the child’s education and learning.” He says choosing mothers to receive the educational material and take it home to children is Pratham’s way of recognising the effort of mothers in educating their children.
Hemlata Sasane, the Programme Head of the Mothers Groups for NIPUN Maharashtra took us to speak to Yogita Pawshe, a ‘leader mother’, and Malati Salvi, a mother from Yogita’s group in Kakadval village in Thane district to understand the role they play in their children’s education.