NEP 2020 has been admired for its extensiveness and inclusivity. This policy is the first to endorse procuring preschool education into the main fold of the conventional institutionally managed education system. So it is termed as a dream come true policy .Shifting focus from higher to Primary classes is a much-needed appreciable step .Primary classes are the roots that bloom flowers of higher education . Thus, it is the sapling that needs proper nurture to get a fruitful tree .
The national FLAN Mission in this connection, is a substantial measure of the Government of India towards ensuring that our children achieve literacy and numeracy skills by Class III. Foundational Literacy means oral language development, Decoding (sounds and symbol relationships), reading fluency, reading comprehension, and writing. Whereas Foundational Numeracy means developing number sense, understanding shapes, and spatial relationships, measurement, data handling, etc
As per the FLN Mission guidelines, India has extensively advanced to achieve widespread access up to the elementary level with one of the largest schooling systems in the world that has almost 250 million school-going children and 9.2 million teachers. Nonetheless, studies have shown that assuring that students are in school does not naturally lead to an increase in their learning. There is a powerful national skepticism today regarding the low learning levels of children at various stages of school education. Research has revealed conclusively that once students fall behind on FLN, they oversee to maintain steady learning curves for years, and are eternally unable to catch up. This is because, until Class III, the curriculum focuses on learning to read or getting children to read and achieve basic aptitudes. After Class III, children are anticipated to be able to read to learn. The learning void proceeds to broaden from that point, as the texts in the language textbooks and mathematical concepts become more complex and abstract in later primary grades. Thus, Class III is the inflection point after which children need to read to be able to learn; an antithesis was children, who haven't made it, get left behind. The damage is even greater for children who are forced to study in a language that they do not speak or understand. Children studying through an unfamiliar language face a ‘double learning disadvantage’ since they must try and learn a new language and at the same time try and learn difficult concepts given in the textbooks through that unfamiliar language. In India, we also have many children who are first-generation learners and do not have an environment of literacy and numeracy at home. They are at greater risk of not achieving the expected learning outcomes.NEP 2020 highlights that a large proportion of students currently in elementary level (estimated to be over five crores), have not achieved FLN. NEP 2020 further reiterates that it is imperative to address this crisis head-on and immediately so that basic learning can be accomplished in schools and all students may thereby obtain a quality education. Attaining FLN for all children must become an immediate national mission. Students, along with their schools, teachers, parents, and communities, must be urgently supported and encouraged in every way possible to help carry out this all-important target and mission, which indeed forms the basis of all future learning. SDG 4 also lays emphasis on the acquisition of high-quality learning and the same is recognized by its signatories across the world. Research and evidence indicate that learning is fast during the foundational stage. Every positive experience at this stage, supports lifelong learning and development hence, through this mission efforts are being made to tap these foundational years for development and lifelong learning. For this NEP 2020 recommends, firmly recognizes, and stresses the importance of quality ECCE. It has a major role in achieving the objectives of the FLN Mission. NEP 2020 has focused on preschool education and made it an integral part of the education system. To build FLN, teachers, therefore, need to focus more on developing phonological awareness and sound discrimination, and visual perception and visual association right from their early childhood stage top children develop into better leaders and writers in the future. The foundational learning period is a crucial phase for the development of intellect, ability, physical growth, mental maturity, and values. Hence, teachers will be required to pay more attention to the holistic development and learning of children and teach children ‘how to learn’. Teachers need to demonstrate equal and appropriate expectations from boys and girls by providing equal attention, respect, and equal learning opportunities; select books, pictures, posters, toys/materials, and other activities free of gender bias; and not use gender-biased statements while talking to the learners or giving instructions in the classroom.
FLN mission has been set up under the aegis of the centrally sponsored scheme of Samagra Shiksha, which is an integrated scheme of school education that covers from preschool to senior secondary level. The intent is to systematically tap this phase of child development under NIPUN BHARAT to overcome the learning crisis and build foundational literacy numeracy with understanding, through a play and activity-based approach. If we wish to implement foundational literacy numeracy mission successfully then we must know what is the aim of the mission. The basic aim of the national mission of FLN is to enable all children to read and respond with comprehension, independently write with understanding, develop number sense, mathematical thinking, problem-solving, and reasoning. The focus is on the holistic development of the child. All children in the class should be happy, confident, thinking, and learning. The major objectives of the mission are:•To ensure that an inclusive classroom is built by incorporating play, discovery, and activity-based pedagogies, linking to the daily life situations of children and formal inclusion of children’s home languages.•To enable children to become motivated, independent, and engaged readers and writers with comprehension, possessing sustainable reading and writing skills.•To make children understand the reasoning in the domains of number, measurement, shapes; and enable independence in problem-solving by way of numeracy and spatial skills.
Conclusion; FLAN mission is a blessing in disguise. The whole training program should be a meticulous version of the NEP2020 policy. Instead of online training offline training would be more fruitful.

Writer is a excerpt from training modules
Email:-----manzoormalik3@gmail.com