National Curriculum Framework for Foundational Skills 2022

What’s in today’s article?

• Why in News?
• What Exactly is the National Curriculum Framework (NCF) for Foundational Skills 2022?
• News Summary Regarding Learning and Teaching Material for Foundational Stage of Schooling
• Why is this Initiative Important?

 Why in News?

• The National Curriculum Framework for Foundational Skills 2022 to meet a key focus area of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, to improve foundational skills of students.
• With this in mind, the Minister for Education recently released learning and teaching material called the “jaadui pitara” or magical box for foundational stage of schooling.

What Exactly is the National Curriculum Framework (NCF) for Foundational Skills 2022?

• Background:
  • As early childhood care and education (ECCE) lays the groundwork for life-long learning and development, the new 5+3+3+4 curricular structure that integrates ECCE for all children aged 3 to 8, was included in the NEP 2020.
  • With the foundational stage (3-8 years) of education as the first stage in the 5+3+3+4 Curricular, pre-primary school children (classes I-II) have entered the formal schooling system in India for the first time.
  • In order to lay the framework, the government unveiled the first NCF for the foundational stage in accordance with the NEP-2020.
  • The NCF 2022 is based on the recommendations of the National Steering Committee (chaired by K Kasturirangan), constituted by the Ministry of Education in 2021 for the development of NCF.
  • The NCF for the foundational stage will be followed by its editions for higher classes, as well as teacher and adult education, in the future.
• The NCF for foundational skills 2022:
  • The new framework includes the ‘panchakosha’ concept for education of children aged 3 to 8, with five components –
  • Physical development (sharirik vikas),
  • Development of life energy (pranik vikas),
  • Emotional and mental development (manasik vikas),
  • Intellectual development (bauddhik vikas), and
  • Spiritual development (chaitsik vikas).
  • It provides for the holistic overall transformation of the curriculum of the ECCE that will enable positive transformation of the school education system of India, including pedagogy.
  • It uses ‘play’ at the core of the approaches to curriculum organisation, as children learn best through play.
  • Hence, NCF will enable the achievement of Foundational Literacy and Numeracy for all children.
  • The NCF will deal with the role of teachers as well as parents and communities to achieve developmental outcomes that are sought during this stage.
  • In particular, the NCF do not just refer to changes in curricular content and pedagogy, but also include school environment and culture that will enhance the overall learning process.

News Summary Regarding Learning and Teaching Material for Foundational Stage of Schooling

• The material will pave the way for implementation of the NCF 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, drawing, singing, dancing, etc.
• Therefore, the teaching material now readied by the NCERT requires teacher engagement to not only be “textbook-free”, but based on toys, puppets, playbooks and story cards.
• 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.
• It will also leverage technology and provide QR codes to enable teachers to access teaching resources such as poems, story books and flashcards.

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Why is this Initiative Important?

• According to the Annual School Education Report 2022 released by NGO Pratham, basic literacy and numeracy levels dropped further post COVID-19.
  • For example, Class 3 students who were able to carry out math subtractions dropped from 28.3% in 2018 to 25.9% in 2022.
• The NEP 2020 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 and needs to become an urgent national mission.
• In this backdrop, the recently released learning and teaching material for the foundational stage of schooling is a nobel beginning.

Q1) What are the components of the National Curriculum Framework (NCF) for Foundational Skills 2022?

The new framework includes the ‘panchakosha’ concept for education of children aged 3 to 8, with five components – Physical development (sharirik vikas), Development of life energy (pranik vikas), Emotional and mental development (manasik vikas), Intellectual development (bauddhik vikas), and Spiritual development (chaitsik vikas).

Q2) What is the name of the committee which recommended the National Curriculum Framework (NCF) for Foundational Skills 2022??

The NCF 2022 is based on the recommendations of the National Steering Committee (chaired by K Kasturirangan), constituted by the Ministry of Education in 2021 for the development of NCF.

Source: Class teaching for 3 to 8-year-olds to be play-based, textbook-free | NCERT.nic.in

VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XpenRCKc5U