S2 | Episode 7 Equity and FLN: Ensuring Foundational Learning for Every Child | Sunisha Ahuja

To begin with, I would like to ask, who are the children that are getting left behind and not attaining foundational literacy and numeracy skills? Also, what does the data tell us?

Thank you, Shaiza.

And I think this is such an important conversation to have today.

When we see that the national assessments are telling us that children, you know, the learning losses that were induced due to long school closure during the pandemic, children have started to come out of that learning loss that we noticed in 2021.

But like you just said, there are deeper challenges that are still there, particularly in mathematics.

There are gender gaps that we see in the learning outcomes that children are achieving.

You refer to the ASER data.

You know, the Class 3 students in government schools could read a Class 2 level text, and this improved from 16.3% in 2022 to 23.4% in 2024.

Class 3 students were able to do a subtraction that too increased from 28.1% to 33.7% in 2024.

So definitely something is working since Nipun Bharat got launched.

But you know these averages, they're really concealing some real deep challenges that we have of learning that are happening in classrooms.

There is a district that could be above average.

But if you dig deeper into the data, you will find that there will be about one third children who are not really learning at that average code level also.

So children are struggling and global and national reports have highlighted that these inequities on FLN, these are strongly correlated to gender, location, socio-economic status and especially with marginalized groups consistently are hardest to hit.

And if I were to say the critical question that we should be really now asking all of ourselves and the system should be asking is whose scores are improving? Which are the children who are not learning? And evidence has suggested that children in low performing states are hardest hit.

They are the children who are not really learning.

And this is, you know, the performance gaps between states that are performing the best and the states that are performing the lowest.

The data is actually showing the gaps are widening, which is a big concern.

And much of this is because of the kind of accumulated effects of the policies that these states have adopted, which could be around language of instruction.

It could be about investment of resources, teacher training, community engagement that happens.

The other important group that we have to think about of children who are not learning are the children from tribal communities.

Imagine a six-year-old walking into a classroom and being addressed in a language or being provided a textbook in a language that the child has no familiarity with.

The context of the textbooks does not represent the local culture of that child.

So it's the tribal children who from, you know, over the years, as we have seen our learning assessment data, even the government learning assessment data, what was earlier called the National Achievement Survey now is called PARAC.

If you look at the trends for the last three rounds, children from tribal communities have consistently performed low.

To begin with, I would like to ask, who are the children that are getting left behind and not attaining foundational literacy and numeracy skills? Also, what does the data tell us?

Thank you, Shaiza.

And I think this is such an important conversation to have today.

When we see that the national assessments are telling us that children, you know, the learning losses that were induced due to long school closure during the pandemic, children have started to come out of that learning loss that we noticed in 2021.

But like you just said, there are deeper challenges that are still there, particularly in mathematics.

There are gender gaps that we see in the learning outcomes that children are achieving.

You refer to the ASER data.

You know, the Class 3 students in government schools could read a Class 2 level text, and this improved from 16.3% in 2022 to 23.4% in 2024.

Class 3 students were able to do a subtraction that too increased from 28.1% to 33.7% in 2024.

So definitely something is working since Nipun Bharat got launched.

But you know these averages, they're really concealing some real deep challenges that we have of learning that are happening in classrooms.

There is a district that could be above average.

But if you dig deeper into the data, you will find that there will be about one third children who are not really learning at that average code level also.

So children are struggling and global and national reports have highlighted that these inequities on FLN, these are strongly correlated to gender, location, socio-economic status and especially with marginalized groups consistently are hardest to hit.

And if I were to say the critical question that we should be really now asking all of ourselves and the system should be asking is whose scores are improving? Which are the children who are not learning? And evidence has suggested that children in low performing states are hardest hit.

They are the children who are not really learning.

And this is, you know, the performance gaps between states that are performing the best and the states that are performing the lowest.

The data is actually showing the gaps are widening, which is a big concern.

And much of this is because of the kind of accumulated effects of the policies that these states have adopted, which could be around language of instruction.

It could be about investment of resources, teacher training, community engagement that happens.

The other important group that we have to think about of children who are not learning are the children from tribal communities.

Imagine a six-year-old walking into a classroom and being addressed in a language or being provided a textbook in a language that the child has no familiarity with.

The context of the textbooks does not represent the local culture of that child.

So it's the tribal children who from, you know, over the years, as we have seen our learning assessment data, even the government learning assessment data, what was earlier called the National Achievement Survey now is called PARAC.

If you look at the trends for the last three rounds, children from tribal communities have consistently performed low.