Lockdown blues: Bridge courses to make up for learning loss

New Delhi, March 14: National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has developed bridge course modules for out-of-school children including various activities which are helpful for bridging the learning gaps.

Different states have also been requested to prepare and implement the School Readiness Module Bridge Course in classrooms for initial one or two months for each grade. The information was given by Minister of State for Education, Annpurna Devi in a written reply in the Lok Sabha on Monday.

NCERT has also prepared ‘Alternative Academic Calendar’ which is a week-wise learning plan for grades 1 to 12.

“The spread of Covid-19 pandemic has impacted school education across the world. Schools in States and Union Territories were closed as a precautionary measure to protect the students from the coronavirus,” she said.

She said that COVID-19 has interrupted the learning of students from pre-school to grade 12. Education is in the concurrent list of the Constitution and the majority of the schools are under the domain of respective State and UT Governments. During a pandemic, the Ministry of Education had several consultations with the States and UTs to assess the various aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic, she added.

The Alternative Academic Calendar consists of interesting activities and challenges related to topics and themes in the syllabus. It maps the topics and themes with the learning outcomes & facilitates teachers and parents to assess the progress in students’ learning in a variety of ways. Also, links for e-resources have been provided for those learners who have access to the internet.

A National Mission on Foundational Literacy and Numeracy called ‘National Initiative for Proficiency in Reading with Understanding and Numeracy (NIPUN Bharat)’ has also been launched by the Ministry of Education (MoE) on July 5, 2021, under the aegis of Samagra Shiksha, the minister said.

The National Mission lays down priorities and actionable agendas for States to achieve the goal of proficiency in foundational literacy and numeracy for every child by grade 3. Vidya Pravesh module has been launched for class 1 students. This is a play based on 3 months of the school preparation program for children entering Class I.

According to the ministry of education, in addition, a comprehensive initiative called PM eVIDYA has been initiated which unifies all efforts related to digital, online, on-air education to enable multi-mode access to education.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by The Kashmir Monitor staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)