Five-Nation Delegation Visits Ghaziabad Schools to Study NIPUN Bharat Mission

A delegation of nearly 70 senior government officials and civil society representatives from Kenya, Brazil, Argentina, South Africa and Senegal is in Ghaziabad to understand India’s foundational literacy and numeracy (FLN) reforms under the NIPUN Bharat Mission. The delegation observed classroom teaching at a Parishadiya Vidyalaya to examine how the mission’s policies are being translated into classroom-level practices.

The visit is part of a week-long peer-learning immersion programme from August 23 to 27, under which the delegates have been divided into smaller groups and taken to 11 schools across Ghaziabad’s Nagar, Rajapur, Loni and Muradnagar blocks. They observed teaching-learning processes and interacted with students, teachers, principals, Academic Resource Persons (ARPs) and State Resource Group officials.

The Ghaziabad exercise is significant because it gives international participants a direct view of how FLN reforms move from policy to classroom implementation. Instead of limiting the engagement to presentations, the delegation examined classroom practices and discussed the academic and administrative support required to implement reforms at scale.

The NIPUN Bharat Mission, launched by the Ministry of Education in 2021, aims to ensure that every child achieves foundational literacy and numeracy by the end of Grade 3 by 2026-27. The mission was developed in line with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, which identified foundational learning as the highest priority for school education.

Following the school visits, the delegation held technical discussions with the Uttar Pradesh Education Department, involving the Ghaziabad District Magistrate, Chief Development Officer, Basic Education Officer, Block Education Officers and State Resource Group members. Discussions covered curriculum and learning objectives, structured teaching-learning materials, teacher guidance and mentoring, assessment and the use of education data. The role of the middle tier district and block-level structures in taking reforms to scale was also examined.

The programme also places Uttar Pradesh’s experience within a wider international education-learning framework. The Lighthouse India Immersion Programme, hosted by the Central Square Foundation, provides a platform for international education stakeholders to study Indian approaches to foundational learning. It is supported by Centro Lemann and the Language and Learning Foundation and funded by Global School Forum, Optima and the Gates Foundation. For the participating countries, the immersion offers an opportunity to examine how India is attempting to strengthen early-grade learning through classroom practices, teacher support, assessment and system-level coordination. For India and Uttar Pradesh, it provides an avenue to share implementation experience while learning from education systems elsewhere.

The Ghaziabad visit therefore highlights a broader shift in education reform: measuring success not merely by enrolment, but by what children actually learn. By bringing international officials into classrooms and connecting them with teachers, students and education administrators, the programme seeks to demonstrate how foundational-learning reforms can be converted into practical action and scaled across school systems.