SCERT holds 4-Day Orientation Workshop in Srinagar

Srinagar : In a run-up to the nationwide Foundational Literacy and Numeracy (FLN) survey to be conducted in the last week of this month, a 4-Day orientation workshop began at the State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT) division office here Monday.
The workshop is being organized by the Educational Research Survey and Assessment (ERSA) Wing of the SCERT.
The field investigators (FI) and district coordinators (DC) appointed for the survey will work under the supervision of the principals of their respective District Institutes of Education and Training (DIET).
The team comprising 40 FIs, 20 DCs and 10 Principals of the DIETs attended the workshop wherein the members of the ERSA wings imparted the necessary training for the purpose.
Giving details of the workshop, Dr Nazneen Me’raj, Senior Academic Officer and HOD ERSA Wing, said the fundamental aim of the study is to facilitate an understanding of learning up to grade 3 to design the intervention strategies.
“Foundational Literacy and Numeracy is targeted at ensuring all children in foundational years achieve basic minimum proficiency in literacy and numeracy,” Dr Nazneen said.
“They must learn the basics of effective communication via oral language comprehension, phonological awareness, decoding, reading and comprehension, besides they should be able to relate to their immediate environment via numbers, operation, measurement, patterns and data handling,” she said.
The Ministry of Education, Dr Nazneen said, has launched a new vertical for Foundational Literacy and Numeracy (FLN) under the Diksha platform for school education.
“The FLN tools and resources have been launched by the Education Minister through the Diksha platform under NIPUN Bharat, ” Dr Nazneen said.
Academic Officer, G H Reshi, who is also the coordinator for FLN, NAS, had prepared an elaborate PowerPoint presentation highlighting the main objectives of the activity and the processes involved in the survey.
“The workshop has been organized to gear up for the survey which is scheduled to be held in the last week of this month,” Reshi said. “The workshop included a full hands-on training for dry runs to be conducted at selected schools in order to familiarize the staff with the correct procedures involving the survey.”
Mohammad Yasir-ul-Haque, Coordinator DIET Shopian, acquainted the participants with the sampling techniques and filling up of the Optical Mark Recognition (OMR) sheets.
The Ministry of Education (MoE) has sent a team of observers to take stock of the dry run to be organized on 14-15 March.
“Considering the critical nature of the study with it being the first of its kind in the world as it aims to set up benchmarks for reading with comprehension in Indian languages, it has been decided to send observers in some States and UTs to ensure effective and proper conduct of the Dry Run for the Foundational Learning Study,” a letter from the MoE reads.
The study will help understand the learning levels of students up to the Grade 3 in order to design the interventional strategies for them.