How Haryana has turned a page in Class 2-3 foundational literacy levels

Dr Pramod Kumar, the State Programme Officer for Nipun Haryana, said the state started working to improve learning levels when discussions first began around the National Education Policy in 2015. As part of the process, Haryana realised the need to concentrate on foundational literacy and numeracy (or what was earlier called functional literacy).

So when the NIPUN Bharat framework, a 350-plus-page document, reached states, Haryana was ready to implement it, the officer said.

Now, Kumar added: “Haryana is probably the only state to have child-wise, grade-wise, competency-wise and subject-wise data.”

Move from ‘syllabus’ to ‘competency’, with Haryana tweaks

Traditionally, school education focused on completing the syllabus, to prepare students for exams. “The NIPUN mission changed that approach by defining grade-wise expected learning outcomes and identifying around 20 key competencies that each child must acquire,” Kumar said, listing these as oral reading fluency, words-per-minute reading ability, comprehension, and mathematical skills.

Schools were provided a structured curriculum, with clearly defined pedagogy, timelines and assessment tools.

What is believed to have had the most impact in Haryana is how the state utilised the census-based assessment mandated under NIPUN Bharat, and devised state-aligned learning outcomes.

For example, the Census Grouping Exercise conducted compiled data on learning levels across government primary schools, by assessing Grades 2 and 3 in approximately 8,600 schools. A total of 4.35 lakh assessments were conducted, including 2.16 lakh for Hindi and 2.2 lakh for maths.

On the basis of this, nearly 75% of the schools in the September were identified in Category C (below 50% students having grade-level proficiency), 15-18% in Category B (51-75% students having grade-level proficiency), and 7.18% in Category A (with at least 75% having proficiency of the grade).

The granular data, fed into the NIPUN Haryana Teacher App, helped identify performance patterns at multiple levels – district, block, cluster, school and even classroom – as well as to generate child-level reports, classifying students as ‘Supported’, ‘Recognised’, or ‘Excellent’. “The assessment tools were aligned with national frameworks, with external teachers doing the assessment to ensure objectivity,” Kumar said.

Haryana also introduced a digital dashboard for regular monitoring.

On the basis of the data, the state then launched a 45-day district-specific remediation drive across all 22 districts. The intervention focused on helping schools move into higher performance bands through measures such as classroom-level competency grouping, targeted lesson planning, and school-wise targets.

Schools were given three months to improve, with remediation involving one-to-one interaction with students done at the 45-day stage.

Deputy Commissioners were roped in, informed about data on schools in their districts, and asked to create steering committees to monitor competency development. Districts prepared their own improvement strategies, identifying needs such as additional teachers or sports equipment.

Teacher training

The state next did training needs analysis of Classes 2 and 3 teachers. While over 1,520 people were trained as “master trainers”, there was cluster-level training for more than 25,000 TGTs (Trained Graduate Teachers) and PGTs (Post-Graduate Teachers) as “enumerators” and “assessors”.

“The training was designed to avoid disrupting school schedules. Most sessions were conducted during summer vacations,” Kumar said, adding that 95% of the teachers enrolled for the training, with those who skipped only doing so due to reasons such as maternity leave or because they were temporarily posted outside the state.

Steps were also taken to involve parents more closely with the school, which was important as almost 75% of the students in government schools come from socially and economically disadvantaged backgrounds.

Giving the example of the district he is responsible for, District Coordinator, NIPUN, Jhajjar, Sudarshan Punia said: “There are 290 primary schools in Jhajjar district. In September 2025’s assessment, only 27 schools were in Category-A. By December, there were 169 schools in the category.”

Punia attributed the improvement to the collection of detailed child-wise data. “We held meetings with teachers. Multiple reasons were pinpointed. We kept tracking students on a weekly basis,” said Punia, hailing “the collective effort from our side, teachers, students and parents”.

Kusum Malik, the Nuh District Coordinator, said Nuh has shown similar improvement. “Say a student was good in Hindi, but poor in Mathematics, or somebody was bad in English. The data helped us analyse such issues. We implemented remedial measures, and skill passbooks were introduced during Zero periods… The bottom 10 schools were taken on priority, cluster heads who are in charge of five-six schools each, were given targets,” Malik said.

Another aspect they worked on, Malik said, was improving pupil-teacher ratio. “Schools where this was around 50:1 were identified.”

The first Census Grouping Exercise after September was conducted at the end of December 2025, with 3.45 lakh students assessed in roughly the same number of government primary schools, again using the NIPUN app.

In three months, students who had Grade 2 literacy levels rose from 46.5% to 67% (a gain of 20.47 percentage points) and numeracy from 63.7% to 78.8% (a rise of 15.16 pp). Students with Grade 3 literacy levels increased from 44.21% to 61.4% and numeracy from 50.5% to 71.0%.

Category A schools increased in numbers from 621 to 4,545, and Category B schools from 1,640 to 2,051, while Category C schools declined sharply from 6,385 to 1,973.