Building a culture of joyful reading among children

School Web Desk

New Delhi / Bengaluru, September 20

Joining hands in sharing the joy of reading with every child, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has partnered with Pratham Books’ StoryWeaver to launch a two-year nationwide Reading Mission. The mission is supported by Central Square Foundation.

The mission will impact young learners across CBSE’s network of 25,000 schools, including Kendriya Vidyalayas, the Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas, Central Tibetan Schools, schools run/aided by the state governments and private independent schools.

The main objective of the CBSE Reading Mission is to promote reading habits among students by setting up a structured reading framework for schools.

Under this mission, which is in line with recommendations of the National Education Policy (2020) and the NIPUN Bharat Guidelines, CBSE schools and teachers will have access to a large repository of openly licensed high-quality English and Hindi children’s storybooks and supplementary resources for Grades I to VIII via the Pratham Books Reading Programme.

These resources, which can be read for free, will be available in English and Hindi on  open-source digital platform, StoryWeaver (www.storyweaver.org.in). StoryWeaver will support the reading mission by empowering teachers with training materials, and conducting engaging virtual reading sessions and activities through periodic ‘Teacher Connect’ interactions where teachers can share best practices, showcase their work and share inputs on the programme design. 

The Reading Mission was launched at an online symposium today. The launch event was attended by CBSE school principals and teachers from across the country. 

The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 emphasizes the importance of well-stocked school libraries and digital libraries to attain the goal of foundational literacy for all children by the year 2025. It recommends making quality children’s literature available in all local languages to build a culture of reading across the country, setting aside specific hours in school to nurture a habit of reading for pleasure from a young age.