From early gains to learning continuity: Why strong foundations need sustained efforts

India’s renewed focus on foundational literacy and numeracy has been both necessary and long overdue. The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 and the NIPUN Bharat Mission have placed early learning firmly at the centre of the reform agenda, correcting a blind spot. Few would dispute that without the ability to read, comprehend, and reason, children are effectively locked out of the wider arc of learning almost from the outset.

But education reforms rarely succeed by only concentrating on first objectives. As foundational indicators begin to stabilise in parts of the system, a more compelling question comes to the fore: what ensures that early gains are not only achieved, but carried forward meaningfully as children move through middle and secondary school? There is a need to prevent the familiar pattern in which initial improvement fades, leaving children disengaged, underprepared for board examinations, and poorly equipped for work or further study.

Struggle to sustain momentum

The risk is well documented. The World Bank’s State of Global Learning Poverty (2022) report estimates that more than half of Indian children in late primary Grades struggle to read with comprehension, and close to half are unable to learn at Grade level in Mathematics. Even where foundational remediation improves early indicators, systems that lack coherent progression across Grades often struggle to sustain momentum. Fragmented curriculum design, uneven pedagogy, and weak instructional support accumulate into widening learning gaps. These pressures are felt most acutely in remote and under served regions, where institutional capacity and continuity are already under strain.

Foundational learning needs to be viewed as a threshold rather than the culmination of reform. The more enduring task lies in building learning continuity defined by the steady alignment of curriculum, pedagogy, assessment, teacher development and governance so that learning competencies deepen in a deliberate and age-appropriate manner. Without this alignment, early literacy and numeracy reforms are likely to lead to temporary returns.

The case for learning continuity

This perspective is consistent with the spirit of NEP 2020, which emphasises competency-based learning, curricular coherence, experiential education, and flexible pathways across stages. It also echoes the spirit of Sustainable Development Goal 4 (Quality Education), which frames quality education as a lifelong continuum rather than a sequence of isolated targets. As India looks ahead to the ambitions of Viksit Bharat 2047, learning continuity becomes inseparable from questions of employability, dignified livelihoods, and social mobility.

Our work over the past three years in Arunachal Pradesh offers an insight into the visible impact such continuity can bring about. In partnership with the State Education Department, we designed, trained and supported the rollout and implementation of a Comprehensive Learning Transformation Programme (CLTP) spanning Grades 1 to 12, which by design moved beyond a narrow focus on foundational remediation. The objective was to treat education as a connected learning journey, strengthening curriculum coherence, classroom practice, teacher capability, assessment alignment, and governance processes in an integrated manner.

Lessons from Arunachal Pradesh

To work across a State like Arunachal Pradesh has its own challenges. Dispersed settlements, difficult terrain, poor road connectivity, issues of availability of adequate number of teachers and intermittent availability of internet networks pose persistent challenges. In such an environment, addressing early learning gaps in isolation, which while being extremely important as the stepping stone to strengthened learning outcomes, would not have led to bringing children up to Grade level learning across all Grades. Embedding progression across Grades allowed foundational competencies to translate into higher-order comprehension, reasoning, and application as learners advanced.

In the 2023–24 cycle of the Performance Assessment, Review, and Analysis of Knowledge for Holistic Development (PARAKH), earlier known as the National Achievement Survey (NAS), the State has moved out of the bottom 10 national ranking to being at the 17th position out of 36 States and Union Territories, and exceeded national averages in Language at Grades 6 and 9. During this period, performance at the Board Examinations improved in parallel, with CBSE pass percentages improving by over 15 percentage points in Grade 10 and over 16 percentage points in Grade 12. The State also advanced from Aspirant to Performer on SDG 4 in the SDG India Index 2024. While no single metric defines system transformation, the consistency of these shifts points to the value of sustained, system-embedded reform.

The broader lesson is about institutional coherence. Learning continuity requires systems to move away from treating Grades, schemes, and assessments as separate administrative compartments. Curriculum must articulate clear developmental pathways. Pedagogy must evolve with learner maturity. Assessment must illuminate conceptual growth rather than episodic recall. Teacher development and teacher participation at every stage from design to execution has to be the fulcrum of this approach. While curriculum and governance establish the enabling architecture, it is teachers who translate design into classroom reality. Their professional growth must therefore extend beyond remediation into disciplinary depth, learner engagement, and applied learning.

The role of governance

Governance plays a critical role in systems change, scale, and sustainability. When District and State leadership operate primarily as compliance mechanisms, the system becomes fragmented. When they function as living learning systems, enabling feedback loops, strengthening middle-tier instructional leadership, and using data diagnostically, coherence becomes embedded. Reform then becomes less dependent on individual champions and more rooted in institutional habit across the learning value chain.

The secondary years are particularly consequential. Adolescence is a period when aspiration, identity, and economic realities begin to intersect. Without exposure to applied learning, skills, and credible pathways to work or higher education, schooling risks losing relevance, especially in economically constrained or remote communities where the opportunity cost of continued education is high. Competency-based, age-appropriate progression creates a bridge between academic learning and real-world application, strengthening school-to-work transition.

From a national standpoint, this is not a marginal concern. Secondary completion rates, workforce readiness, and productivity are deeply linked to the quality of learning trajectories established earlier. As India consolidates its foundational gains, the reform conversation must mature accordingly. The central question is no longer only whether children can read and compute in early Grades, but whether the system enables learning to compound across the schooling cycle. Cohorts have to be tracked meaningfully over time and teachers need to be continuously supported to adapt pedagogy as learners’ cognitive and social needs evolve. Accountability mechanisms have to be aligned to strengthen learning rather than merely report activity.

If learning continuity becomes a central organising principle of system design and governance, India’s education system can move beyond cycles of remediation toward a steadier trajectory of capability and opportunity, ensuring that strong foundations mature into productive, dignified futures.

But one premise that is critical to this sort of reform succeeding is Government’s total acceptance and buy-in to reform across the entire value chain, without which legitimacy, such results and impact are not possible. To put it simply, the Government has to be the hero in this story of transformation.

(Ratna Viswanathan, CEO, Reach to Teach Foundation)

(Sign up for THEdge, The Hindu’s weekly education newsletter.)

Published – February 06, 2026 12:31 pm IST