At the Galia Lower Primary School of Nalbari district, two grandmothers were nonchalantly crushing betel nuts as they do at the courtyard of their homes, and narrating tales of wonder, and morality to schoolchildren akin to their grandsons and daughters. The children on the other hand are amused, eyes wide open, and gasping.
Welcome to a new world of education courtesy the New Education Policy 2020 of the Government of India and one of its important components called Nipun Bharat. It aims to ensure that every child in the country attains foundational literacy and numeracy by Grade 3 by 2026-27.
The Assam Government on its part has launched its own version of Nipun Axom to improve children’s psychology, ethics, and morality through activities beyond traditional classroom teachings. Here, children up to Class III are taught numeracy and literacy through various means, including storytelling by the elderly thereby attempting to arrest the fast-decreasing bond between the grandparents and the children.
Nipun Axom focuses on the growth of the language spoken at home as well as one’s mother tongue.
To make classroom interesting, the State Council of Education Research and Training, Assam and Samagra Sikhsa Abhiyan have coordinated to achieve the desired objectives: read with understanding, write with purpose, and understand numeracy to solve day-to-day life situations.
“The endeavour of Galia Lower Primary School is one of the steps under Nipun Axom. Among the others include home visits by teachers, training and sensitisation of guardians, celebration of festivals,” Girindra Kashyap, the State Award winning teacher told Asom Barta.
“We were imparted training in March this year to facilitate an improvement in the teaching-learning process. Based on that, we have undertaken various ways of making the entire process interesting, including proper usage of teaching tools. We also reach out to guardians in the process. A lecture series called ‘Guest of the Month’, wherein we invite experts, has also been introduced by us,” the teacher told this newsletter.
“Guardians are also contributing to help us implement Nipun Axom. We have involved guardians to even teach our children. Our village elders, especially the grandmothers, come here and tell stories to children. The children listen to these stories with rapt attention, and then they narrate these stories to us. We are trying to bring back those good days of yore,” Girindra said.
State Resource Group Member (Nipun Axom) Mizanur Rahman, who is also an assistant teacher of 2234 No. Gutimara Primary School, said that training sessions have been conducted at the district, block and zonal level under Nipun Axom which have benefited teachers immensely. These have also been received very enthusiastically by the school management committees.
The same response has been seen at the Anandaram Senior Basic School. “Most of our students have Bengali as their mother tongue. Yet, most of them have solid grounding in Assamese. This has helped us impart lessons easily. However, if any student has a problem in understanding, teachers go out of their way to assist them. We use barnawali cards, word cards, etc., besides numerical tools to improve learning experience,” assistant teacher in the school Abdur Rashid Choudhury told this reporter.
