COVID-19: Delhi govt’s two-phase action plan to bridge learning gap in Classes 3-9 students

NEW DELHI: The Directorate of Education (DoE) has geared up to bridge the learning gap and re-build the foundational competencies of students in the new session starting from April 1, 2022. It would be the first time that students will be attending the new session physically after a series of lockdowns because of Covid- 19 in the past two years.

A review meeting with all heads of schools and deputy directors of DoE was conducted by Director Education Himanshu Gupta today. He directed them to exclusively focus on emotional well-being and foundational skills in the first quarter of session 2022-23 for students of Classes 3 to 9.

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DoE has prepared a two-phase action plan to bridge the competency gap among the students. Explaining the rationale of the approach, Director Education said that the class-wise syllabus would be reduced to give opportunity to every child to not just re-build their foundational competencies but also build conceptual clarity before taking up subject wise topics.

“Teachers will be specially trained to address the learning related issues of children in the new session and implement the two phase plan in schools. A weekly review will be conducted by the Director Education to assess the implementation of the plan,” he added.

This year, DoE has decided to include Class 9 students especially in the Happiness Class and Mission Buniyaad classes as all their previous classes in the past two years were conducted online and they might need assistance to recover from the learning loss in the past two years.

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In the meeting, Principal Advisor to Director Education Shailendra Sharma highlighted the need of teaching the students at a level where they are at, rather than imposing the syllabus. The focus in schools would be on basic reading, writing and numeracy skills under Mission Buniyaad, so that a strong foundation is laid for the students.

What is Delhi government's two phase action plan?

Phase 1 (till April 10, 2022)

• Refresher training of all teachers to be engaged in Mission Buniyaad at school level.
• Baseline assessment of remaining/new students of Classes 3 to 9.
• A Mega PTM will be organized in the first week of April to apprise the parents about Mission Buniyaad and to ensure regular attendance of children
• Distribution of Mission Buniyaad material

Entire school time to be assigned for the following activities:

a. Mission Buniyaad class for reading, writing and numeracy

b. Happiness class

c. Revision of previous worksheets

d. Library and reading period

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Phase 2 (April 11 till June 15, 2022)

• Mission Buniyad and Happiness classes:

a. Between 7am to 9am in Morning/General shift schools.

b. Between 4pm to 6pm in Evening shift schools.

c. Two hours every day will be distributed as 30 minutes for Happiness, 45 minutes for Hindi reading and writing and 45 min for basic Math.

• Assessment on every working Saturday to track the progress.
• Catch up sessions to connect students with the academic concepts of previous classes through worksheets