Classroom learning sans textbooks and one that is instead based on toys, puppets, playbooks, and story cards are at the core of the implementation of a curriculum framework prepared by the Union government for children in the age group of three to eight to meet a key focus area of the National Education Policy to improve foundational skills of students.
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Called the “jaadui pitara” or magical box, Minister for Education Dharmendra Pradhan on Monday released learning and teaching material for the foundational stage of schooling that also leverages technology and provides QR codes to enable teachers to access teaching resources such as poems, storybooks, and flash cards. The teaching material released will pave the way for implementation of the National Curriculum Framework for Foundational Skills 2022 released in October last year for students in balvatika (pre-primary) and classes 1 and 2.
The Framework describes that children between three and six years learn best through doing activities “such as talking, listening, using toys, working with material, painting, and drawing singing, dancing, running, and jumping,” says a concept note prepared by the Education Ministry.
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Therefore, the teaching material now readied by the NCERT requires teacher engagement to not only be “textbook-free” but also involve “conversations, storytelling, toy-based learning, songs and rhymes, music and movement, arts and craft, indoor and outdoor games, spending time with nature, and field trips.”
Specifically for literacy it lays an emphasis on oral language development, word recognition, reading, and writing and for numeracy it will need to focus on oral math, teaching of skills, math games, and practicing skills.
Drop in skills
According to the Annual School Education Report 2022 released by NGO Pratham last month, basic literacy and numeracy levels dropped further post COVID-19. Children’s reading ability dropped to pre-2012 level — seeing a sharper drop than numeracy skills. Children in Class 3 who were able to read at Class 2 level also dropped from 27.3% in 2018 to 20.5% in 2022. Class 3 students who were able to carry out math subtractions dropped from 28.3% in 2018 to 25.9% in 2022.
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The emphasis on play-based learning and the need to improve foundational skill is one of the core focus areas of the National Education Policy 2020.
It recognises that over 5 crore students in elementary school are unable to read and comprehend basic text and carry out basic mathematical addition and subtraction.
Therefore, it acknowledges that improving “foundational skills is an indispensable prerequisite for all future schooling and life-long learning” and that it needs to become an “urgent national mission”. It also requires State and Union Territory governments to “prepare an implementation plan for attaining universal foundational literacy and numeracy in all primary schools and identifying stage-wise targets and goals to be achieved by 2025.”
The concept note also states that the framework has been inspired by Indian culture and tradition of inquiry and cites the Panchakosha concept in the Taittiriya Upanishad, which, it says, is one of the earliest articulations of the different domains of development of the human being.