Onlykashmir.in News Desk
Jammu and Kashmir Education Minister Sakeena Masood Itoo attended the NIPUN Bharat and Vidya Pravesh (AAGAAZ) programme at the State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT), Kashmir Division, in Srinagar on Thursday, as the chief guest of the event.
The programme was organised under the Foundational Literacy and Numeracy (FLN) Mission, a nationwide push focused on strengthening basic reading, writing and numeracy skills among young children, with Thursday’s session concentrating specifically on how the mission is being rolled out across Kashmir Division’s schools.
Speaking at the event, Itoo said the results of decisions taken by Chief Minister Omar Abdullah in the education sector over the past two years are increasingly becoming visible on the ground. She cited a 17 percent rise in enrolment, alongside progress on smart classrooms, free education initiatives and recruitment reforms, framing these gains as evidence that the government’s education-sector interventions are translating into measurable improvements rather than remaining confined to policy documents.
The minister stressed the importance of strengthening foundational learning during a child’s earliest years of schooling, arguing that every child should be able to read with genuine understanding, count with comprehension, write with confidence and think with curiosity, rather than simply memorising material without grasping the underlying concepts.
The NIPUN Bharat and Vidya Pravesh initiatives are designed to strengthen these foundational learning outcomes and ensure quality education reaches every child, in line with what officials describe as the mission’s guiding vision: “Every Child, Every Classroom, Every Day.” For Kashmir Division’s schools, sustained emphasis on foundational literacy at this stage is seen as critical groundwork for improving outcomes further up the educational pipeline in the years ahead.
