A campaign to strengthen awareness on foundation literacy and numeracy (FLN), the New Education Policy (NEP), and India’s presidency of G20, the Department of School Education in the State organised a fortnight of activities spread across the State. The programme covered 62,128 schools, 21,60,269 students, 1,88,020 teachers and 2,87,207 community members.
The Department used a multi-pronged approach that included in-person workshops/seminars, online meetings, social-media campaigns, etc., to ensure wide-spread publicity of the events, and large community participation to achieve the goal of ‘Janbhagidari’.
The activities covered the three broad developmental goals under NIPUN Bharat – children maintain good health and well-being, and that children become effective communicators, and become involved learners.
As part of the Janbhagidari events, Assam also organized a one-day seminar on FLN on June 13 wherein State Education Minister Dr. Ranoj Pegu chaired the seminar. The Minister interacted with primary grade students who represented their districts with different artefacts (stories, poems, drawings etc.) prepared by them. The Minister also inaugurated the State’s dedicated website for FLN as well as E-Kaksha Assam.
Assistant Teacher of Charigharia Primary School, Jorhat Luna Saikia told Asom Barta that their school organised a participatory programme under Janbhagidari, especially involving students up to Class III. “Since our area is predominantly inhabited by Misings, we organised games, and sessions around their stories and folktales to drive home the relation between their tradition and that of the outside world,” Saikia said.
In Pakamura Primary School in Majuli, activities involving the elderly from the village, and alumni of the school were invited to interact with the students. “A publication on traditional musical instruments was distributed among the students besides construction of a miniature traditional Mising house in the premises of the school. Besides, items of daily use were displayed using the traditional name as well as Assamese to give students an understanding of both the languages,” an assistant teacher of the School, Rajiv Sarma, informed this reporter.