FLN: A high-stake activity

The government defines FLN as “the ability to read with understanding and perform basic mathematical calculations by the end of grade three”. India’s NIPUN Bharat mission aims for every child to get there by 2026-27, the current school year.

In 2024, fewer than one in four Class 3 children in rural government schools could read a Class 2 text; in rural Karnataka, about one in seven could.

The deficits are glaring.

The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 calls these skills “an indispensable prerequisite for all future schooling and lifelong learning”. It estimated that over 5 crore elementary-school students lacked them and made universal FLN by Grade 3 “an urgent national mission”. Its target year, 2025, became 2026-27 under NIPUN Bharat.

Whie recognised as important by the Government how can we possibly close this gap when the state of public schools (and private schools) are far from conducive for this to happen. On Ground Zero, Government schools in Bengaluru city are under resourced. We work in 9 schools in the Bellandur-Sarjapur Road area – where the need for Grade 1-2-3 teachers was acute and we were asked to run our program TRANSFORM (for FLN) in these schools which we do.

Along the way we had to address issues of space (built extra rooms) and accessibility (arranged transport) in order for Grades 1-2-3 function on par in our partner schools.

In addition, Gubbachi’s know how in bridging gaps in older children who have missed out on FLN in its bridge programs is strong. We have nuanced our program portfolio to include the very tricky problem of fast tracking the adolescent to Grade 10, against all odds towards the completion of Grade 10, where the time available is a window of not more than 4-5 years (till the child hits16-17 years and in some cases even 18 years of age.

Whatever the age or level there is no denying that FLN holds the key to attainment (Grade 10 completion as we define it) and the making of competently literate adults in future years. We often hear corporates talk about re skilling of new hires when they find that graduates come with weak critical thinking skills – all related to meaningful literacy.

The stakes are simple yet high: later classes assume children can read, so a child who cannot read a word problem struggles in Math too.