Literacy rates in rural India have recorded a jump of more than 10 percentage points in the past decade, Union Minister of State for Education Jayant Chaudhary claimed in the Lok Sabha on Monday.
According to data shared by Chaudhary, rural India’s literacy rate has increased from 67.77 per cent in 2011 to 77.50 per cent in 2023-24 among people aged seven and above. He claimed that female literacy increased from 57.93 percent to 70.4 percent and male literacy from 77.15 percent to 84.7 percent.
“To improve the literacy rate, including the rural literacy rate among adults in the country, the Government of India has launched several centrally sponsored schemes/programmes from time to time such as Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan (2018-19 to 2025-26), Literate India (2009-10 to 2017-18 till), Padhana Rekhna Abhiyan (2020-21) till 2021-22) and ULLAS-Nav Bharat Saakharta Karyakram/NILP (2022-23 to 2026-27) has yielded positive results,” he said.
In his written reply, he also talked about the Nav Bharat Literacy Program (NILP), a centrally sponsored scheme called ‘ULLAS: Understanding of Lifelong Learning for All in Society’. Plan, align
With NEP 2020, targets out-of-school adults (15 years and above) and focuses on rural areas, educationally backward areas, women etc. The scheme is being implemented in a hybrid mode, states/UTs have flexibility in offline, online, or a combined approach, he said.
He also said that a dedicated ULLAS mobile app has been developed for the registration of students and volunteer teachers and has enabled the teaching learning process by providing access to primers in 26 languages. He claimed that 20 million students across the country have participated in the literacy test called Foundational Literacy and Numeracy Assessment Test (FLNAT).
“Maharashtra is also implementing this scheme and more than 10.87 lakh students have registered under ULLAS scheme. The state has conducted its first FLNAT in which more than 4 lakh students appeared for the exam. State Bihar has not implemented ULLAS scheme yet,” he said. added