'CHAHAK', UP's parent-teacher festival with a difference

Lucknow 'CHAHAK', a festival being organised by the state basic education department in Uttar Pradesh will be held after Diwali.

The new initiative, CHAHAK -- Children Having Happiness in Ambience and Acquiring Knowledge -- will be a kind of parent-teacher meeting in which parents will be briefed by the teachers about the progress made by their child in school.

The child will demonstrate the knowledge acquired.

"The idea is to involve parents in the child's progress," said principal secretary, basic education, Deepak Kumar.

Students' achievements will be highlighted by showing their portfolio to parents. There will be demonstrations related to language skills such as poetry recitation, story-telling, role play, etc., by the children in front of the parents.

The school will organise quiz and games to demonstrate numerical aptitude, in which the child can identify different patterns from numbers 1 to 10.

In this initiative, parents who regularly discuss the progress of the child with the teacher, will be honoured. All children enrolled in school and their parents will be involved in this.

The CHAHAK exercise was part of NIPUN Bharat Mission (National Initiative for Proficiency in Reading with Understanding and Numeracy) launched by the Union education ministry under the Samagra Shiksha scheme (an overarching programme for school education sector extending from preschool to Class 12) aligned with the National Education Policy 2020, the official said.

The scheme ensures that every child from Class 1 to 3 can acquire FLN (Foundational Literacy and Numeracy) skills by the end of 2026.

"It is essential for the children in the primary schools to have basic knowledge. NIPUN Bharat Mission instructs teachers or educators to prepare a study plan that develops the students' literary and basic language skills," he added.