Odisha govt asks edu officers to expedite ULLAS enrolment for 100% literacy, ETEducation
Bhubaneswar: The school and mass education department has directed district and block-level education officers across the state to expedite enrolment of non-literate adult learners and volunteer teachers in the Union ministry of education’s Understanding Lifelong Learning for All in Society (ULLAS) initiative, which aims to provide adults with functional literacy skills such as reading, writing and numeracy.
The ministry is implementing the initiative to achieve 100% literacy by 2030, in alignment with the National Education Policy-2020 and UN Sustainable Development Goals (quality education). As part of the initiative, education officers rope in volunteer teachers to teach reading, writing and numeracy skills (Class 3 level) to identified adults aged 15 and above from all backgrounds who didn’t have formal schooling. The learners then appear for the ULLAS Foundational Literacy and Numeracy Assessment Test (FLNAT), organised by the ministry nationwide, to gain literacy certificates.
While the ministry set the target for enrolment of 22.66 lakh learners and volunteer teachers from Odisha for the current 2025-26 financial year, the district and block levels, so far, enrolled 7,19,596 of them for ULLAS, also known as the New India Literacy Programme (NILP).
According to the director of elementary education, Balamakunda Bhuyan, at present, ULLAS enrolment is above 50% in five districts, 25% in 11 districts and the remaining 14 districts are below 25%.
With the FLNAT for the current financial year scheduled in March this year, Bhuyan asked all the education officers to expedite enrolment and training.
The districts of Nabarangpur, Deogarh, Ganjam, Nayagarh and Boudh have over 50% enrolment in ULLAS. According to the Periodic Labour Force Survey 2023-24, the state’s literacy rate for people above seven years was more than 79%, while the Census 2011 literacy rate was 72.87%.
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