Letters to the Editor: The biggest-ever recruitment exam

The biggest-ever recruitment exam

The news headline 'Assam's date with history today; the biggest-ever recruitment exam' published in your esteemed daily has drawn our attention as the Assam government has scripted history when as many as 11.23 lakh candidates will appear in the examinations on fixed dates for the recruitment of around 30,000 grade four and grade three posts at a time. The state's CM deserves much appreciation for taking an extra-ordinary initiative to ensure fairness and transparency in holding the examination, while the state government has put the district and police administration on its toes to prevent the recurrence of unpleasant incidents that marred such examinations earlier. The temporary suspension of telecom services and prohibition of mobile WiFi services of all mobile service providers in the entire state during the examination hours to make the massive recruitment examination unfair means-free is really praiseworthy. The arrangements for running twelve special trains between upper and lower Assam and the Barak Valley to make the travel of the examinees a smooth affair are history in themselves in the state. Bringing every examination centre and the areas in and around examination centres under CCTV surveillance during the examination period makes one feel the amount of importance and priority the government is giving to ensure fair recruitment examinations. The validation of a healthy recruitment examination with small-town centres competing equally with their more celebrated counterparts augurs well for the state government's recruitment policy. The conscious citizens must keep their eyes and ears open so that the antisocial elements who try to resort to rumour-mongering through social media to destabilise the examination process cannot take advantage of the situation. So much so that, let us cooperate with the government to make the biggest-ever recruitment examinations successful.

Iqbal Saikia,

Guwahati.

Importance of Foundational Literacy and Numeracy

A few days back, a very pertinent five-day block-level training of teachers on Foundational Literacy and Numeracy was concluded successfully across educational blocks of Assam. Such trainings are part of the initiative taken by the government through NIPUN Axom (launched in 2021), which has set afoot on the track of achieving foundational literacy and numeracy by 2026–27. In addition to such trainings, many more initiatives, like the distribution of learning and activity books, are taken among students who are in their foundational stage of learning, i.e., pre-primary to class III.

Teaching-learning materials like big books, Oral Language Development (OLD) teaching materials, numeracy and letter charts are provided to schools for teaching and learning purposes, etc  . There is no denying the fact that poor focus on the foundational stage of education may result in huge learning gaps, which in turn leads to huge dropouts and poor socio-economic conditions in the future. The World Literacy Condition (2018) indicates that an abysmal literacy rate incurs a global economic loss of around 1.8 trillion dollars per annum. Moreover, a substantial number of studies and incontrovertible reports suggest the importance of FLN and its beneficial influence in the economy,, reduction in crime and child marriage, etc. Studies by Goodman and Sianesi (2005) depict students with proper pre-primary education becoming gainful earners until the age of 33 in comparison to those who didn't or failed to acquire. This is why  Foundational Literacy and Numeracy are so important.  While hoping for a better future ahead, we would like to appreciate the government and all the stakeholders for their relentless efforts in achieving FLN.

Phanseng Singpho

Jorhat