The Ministry of Education has asked all states and districts to ensure that children in the age group of 3-8 years are enrolled in schools and have access to basic facilities.

A letter was sent to all stakeholders this month, as part of the implementation of the government’s central foundational literacy and numeracy mission - National Initiative for Proficiency in Reading with Understanding and Numeracy (NIPUN Bharat).

The NIPUN Bharat Mission gains relevance in the context of the new National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 which accords the “highest priority of the education system, to achieve universal foundational literacy and numeracy in primary schools by 2025”.

• Policy to regulate pre-primary non-grant-in-aid institutes: In the absence of a defined set of rules, the Gujarat government has come up with a policy to regulate pre-primary non-grant-in-aid institutes, including play schools in the state. The policy designates M I Joshi, Director of Primary Education, as the Gujarat State Pre-Primary Regulatory Authority. 

• Monitoring setup for schools: Two years after Gujarat launched a school-monitoring control room — Vidya Samiksha Kendra (VSK) — to collect and analyze data from various government schemes, 14 other states and one Union Territory (UT) have initiated the process to set up similar units. The VSK is tasked with collecting data to track key performance indicators in schools, such as attendance of teachers and students, as well as undertake summative and periodic assessments of learning outcomes of students. NCERT has already set up a centralized VSK to monitor state data on education, which is now acting as the nodal agency to provide states with the technical know-how required to set up VSKs of their own.
   
• First step towards centralizing school examination boards: The Ministry of Education recently called for its first workshop aimed at unifying the 60 school examination boards operating in different states and union territories under one umbrella. The workshop focused on school assessments, examination practices and equivalence of boards across the country. The main component of this plan is PARAKH or the National Assessment Centre, which has been made to bring school boards across India to a common platform.
   
• Focus on NEP 2020 at C20 event: Speaking at the inaugural session of the two-day C20 Summit on Education and Digital Transformation held in Thiruvananthapuam, Minister of State for External Affairs V. Muraleedharan shared how the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 has provided access to quality education for students in remote corners of the country. He also spoke about how India has been advancing rapidly in the field of digital education.

• New digital learning solution for Arunachal schools: A new initiative called 'Digi-kaksha' was launched in a primary school in Deomali, Arunachal Pradesh. Aimed at digitizing the education system in the state, the EdTech solution will provide an immersive learning experience for students, offering pre-loaded creative learning content for classes nursery to XII, based on CBSE curriculum.

• Training Master Trainers to improve student health and well-being: To advance implementation of the School Health and Wellness Programme (SHWP) in all 29,000 CBSE - affiliated schools, a training was held for over 200 Master Trainers in the NCERT premises recently. The School Health and Wellness Programme (SHWP) was launched by the Ministry of Education and Ministry of Health and Family Welfare with the aim of improving the health and well-being of school-going children in India. 
   
• Bengal's massive recruitment drive: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee announced the recruitment of 1.25 lakh new employees in various departments of the state government over the next few months. The recruitment drive will include the appointment of 11,000 primary teachers, 14,500 secondary school teachers, 9,493 Anganwadi workers, and 13,926 Anganwadi helpers, among others. 

• Making schools NIPUN: 35 of the 446 government primary schools in Gautam Budhh Nagar district of Uttar Pradesh will be developed under the NIPUN Bharat Mission. According to officials, all government and primary composite schools in the district have been given a deadline of December 2023 to achieve the NIPUN status.