Acquiring Foundational Literacy and Numeracy at the stage of Early Childhood Care and Education

Education

ABSTRACT Foundational literacy and numeracy (FLN) is critical for a child’s future learning, especially during early childhood. India’s policy approach to FLN has been spotlight from the broad developmental focus of the National Policy on Education (NPE) 1986 to the outcome-oriented framework of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. NEP 2020 stipulated acquisition of FLN by Grade 3 as a national priority and incorporates Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) into the formal system (Ministry of Education, 2020). To improve this, the NIPUN Bharat Mission (2021) was launched to ensure achievement of FLN by 2026–27 (Ministry of Education, 2021). The present study seeks to explore the acquisition of foundational literacy and numeracy skill among grade II children with the frame work of early childhood care and education. The primary objectives are to access student’s basic literacy and numeracy skills and to examine the correlation between them. A sample of 65 students was taken from 5 schools of Bhubaneswar city across three key dimensions of literacy—reading fluency, writing fluency, and vocabulary and three dimensions of numeracy—pre-number concepts, number and operations, and measurement. Findings revealed stronger performance in vocabulary and measurement, while reading fluency and number operations emerged as areas needing focused attention. A high positive correlation (r = 0.943) was found between overall literacy and numeracy scores, suggesting that foundational skills are closely interlinked. The study contributes to the growing body of research advocating for holistic foundational learning frameworks in early children education

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