The National Assessment Center of the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), PARAKH, is conducting individual tablet-based assessments for third-grade students under the Foundation Learning Study (FLS) 2026, which covers basic skills such as comprehension, oral reading fluency and basic mathematics, and the data collection is expected to end by May-June 2026, officials said.
About 10,000 trained field investigators from the District Institute of Education and Training (DIETs) are conducting FLS 2026 in a phased manner in 20 languages “using tablets in individual mode,” officials said. More than 1,00,000 third year students across 10,000 government, government aided and private schools in 776 districts of 36 states and union territories will be assessed during the study.
The results will serve as a “mid-term analysis” to evaluate the progress made under the National Initiative for Proficiency in Reading with Comprehension and Numeracy (NIPUN Bharat), launched by the Union Education Ministry in July 2021 to achieve universal foundational literacy and numeracy (FLN) for children up to Class III by 2026-27, officials said.
Assessments cover students’ comprehension abilities, oral reading fluency, letter decoding, and conceptual understanding of mathematics, among others. Data collection is scheduled to be completed by May and June 2026, with analysis to continue over the next three months, officials said.
In FLS 2022, which covered 86,000 students in 10,000 schools, field researchers recorded children’s performance using visual mark recognition (OMR) sheets.
“This time, we decided to make this process easier by introducing tablets. The idea was to make data recording simpler and more efficient for field investigators. We had conducted a very rigorous training for the investigators in March before the start of FLS on March 23,” PARAKH CEO and President Indrani Bhaduri told HT.
Established in 2023 as an autonomous unit under NCERT as part of the implementation of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, PARAKH – Performance Assessment, Review and Analysis of Knowledge for Holistic Development – establishes norms, standards and guidelines for assessment of students across recognized school boards.
During FLS 2026 training, investigators practiced administering assessments to each other to familiarize themselves with the assessment tools and scoring process. “A key element was ensuring inter-rater reliability. Two investigators independently assessed the same child, and their notes were compared. Only those with at least 85% agreement were published, while others underwent retraining,” she added.
The training has been completed in 15 states and union territories, including Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Jammu and Kashmir, and will continue in phases elsewhere.
The FLS differs from the National Achievement Survey (NAS) – now called PARAKH Rashtriya Sarvekshan – which is a system-wide assessment that assesses overall learning outcomes across grades. While the NAS is MCQ-based without any direct interaction, the FLS is an individual performance-based assessment.
“In FLS, we assess whether a child is able to decode letters, words and sentences, and measure oral reading fluency along with comprehension. In mathematics, we focus on basic arithmetic and conceptual understanding – such as understanding that multiplication is repeated addition and division is repeated subtraction,” Bhaduri said.
While FLS 2022 served as a baseline, FLS 2026 is a mid-term evaluation to evaluate the progress made under the NIPUN Bharat framework, she added. “The results will help countries understand whether their interventions have been successful or need to course correct,” she said. “The third cycle will serve as a final evaluation after about two years.”
