Foundational Learning Campaign(FLC)

Seven-year-old Lisa Behra was in the first standard in a government school when the country-wide lockdown was announced on the evening of 24 March 2020. Schools were shut and learning came to a complete stand still for several months before online classes were started. But Lisa had already left learning by then and had started working with her mother in Ashwatthapala gram panchayat in Odisha’s Jajpur district. When schools finally reopened in April 2022, Lisa was officially in the third grade but she had skipped all the learning that was supposed to take place in the first and second grades. And whatever little she had learned before the lockdown; she had already forgotten. She was a functionally illiterate third-grade student. 

This is not the story of only Lisa but of a generation of children in our country who are struggling to find their way back to classrooms. They are in dire risk of falling into illiteracy and we as fellow countrymen must come together to fight this looming learning disaster.

In 2021, the Government of India launched a National Initiative for Proficiency in Reading with Understanding and Numeracy (NIPUN Bharat) to ensure that every child attains foundational literacy and numeracy. In consultation with government teachers, ASPIRE has done a comprehensive review of the government’s foundational learning plan in Odisha and Jharkhand and identified several gaps in teaching material, knowledge, pedagogy, and human resources.

Our strategy is to recruit, and train educated volunteers from the local community, who will aid the government teacher in implementing the foundational learning content as well as fill in the gaps in pedagogy and knowledge. These volunteer teachers will be supervised by our full-time Learning staff. We will also distribute teaching learning material in schools where there is a shortfall. We plan to assign one volunteer teacher per two government schools in all 39 program blocks.

Per child cost of rolling out the FLC program for one year is 3,120 INR. Out of this, the per child cost of 2,420 INR is the value of time donated by volunteer teachers during the year in supporting the program. The volunteer teachers are not paid any salary and are only reimbursed for their mobile data and travel costs. The remaining 700 INR per child cost will be borne by ASPIRE and includes expenses on teaching material, stationery, training of volunteer teachers, mobile data pack and travel cost of volunteer teachers, and supervisory structure cost. 

Currently, there are 185,000 children in grades 1 to 3 in 5000 government schools in the 39 blocks. Through our FLC we want to reach out to each & every child of grades 1 to 3 in these blocks in Orissa & Jharkhand. We are raising around 12.95 crores – 700 INR *185,000 children - to cover the current year's cost expenses borne in running the Foundational Learning Campaign.

ASPIRE has significant experience in transforming the learning levels of first-generation learners through our innovative learning strategies, which focus on six aspects of learning - planning, teacher learning material (TLM), pupil organisation, classroom culture, classroom transaction, and assessment. Our learning strategies ensure that children become self-directed learners with 21st-century skills. So far, our work has enabled 2,50,000 children from the most disadvantaged geographies to overcome reading, writing, and math deficits and move from learning to read to reading to learn. 

UPDATE: 12 September 2022

Our campaign has already reached 1,17,319 children(58934 Boys and 58375 girls) from 2363 schools in 626 panchayats across 38 blocks. We have also achieved 100% coverage in 5 blocks of Odisha. 1668 volunteers are already a part of our campaign and we plan to add 1485 more in the next phase which will reach 74119 children from 1359 schools.