National Literacy Mission to substantially focus on women: Sibal

New Delhi, Aug 21(ANI): The Government on Friday said that the National Literacy Mission is being recast, so that, 80 per cent coverage of the mission is of women, whose literacy rate at present is at an unacceptable level of 54 per cent.

Union Minister for Human Resource Development Kapil Sibal said this while chairing the 11th Meeting of the National Literacy Mission Authority (NLMA) here on Friday.

Sibal informed NLMA members that while the total budgetary support during the last three plans for the programme was Rs. 2862.95 crore, the outlay for the 11th plan was at a much higher level of Rs.6000 crore.

Sibal said that the Mission would be run in active participation with the State Governments unlike in the past when the mission was run directly from the centre through the different implementation agencies at the district level.

He also said that Adult Education Centres would be set up at the Gram Panchayat, which will be the unit for implementation of the programme.

He also informed that the Panchayat would work in tandem with the community to implement the programme.

Sibal further highlighted that a Curriculum Framework for Adult Literacy will be developed with adequate reflection of locally relevant issues and aspects.

He pointed out that unlike in the past, each learner will be tagged and tracked for the learning achievement. Besides an efficient MIS system, concurrent monitoring systems will be put in place for field validation.

Thirty two of the forty four members of the NLMA participated in the meeting, which passed the agenda put before it.

Union Minister for Rural Development C.P. Joshi, Minister of State for Human Resource Development D. Purandeswari, Secretary for Department of School Education and Literacy Anshu Vaish, were among those present in the meeting. (ANI)