Institutions Driving Non-Formal Education in India

India’s journey toward universal literacy has never been confined to the walls of a classroom. For millions of adults – women in rural households, daily wage workers, school dropouts, and marginalized communities – formal schooling was never an option. It is here that non-formal education (NFE) institutions step in, filling the gap between ambition and access. Several government-backed institutions have been at the forefront of this effort, each designed to serve a specific segment of the underserved population. This post takes a close look at four of the most significant pillars of non-formal education in India: the National Literacy Mission, Continuing Education Programmes, Jan Shikshan Sansthan, and State Literacy Missions with their Resource Centres.

National Literacy Mission (NLM): building the foundation 🔗

When the Government of India launched the National Literacy Mission on May 5, 1988, the scale of the problem was daunting. India had close to 268 million illiterates in the 15+ age group alone – one of the largest concentrations of illiteracy in the world. The NLM was conceived as a direct response: a nationwide, campaign-based initiative to bring functional literacy to adults aged 15 to 35, the most economically productive segment of the population.

What the NLM set out to do 🔗

The NLM’s goals went well beyond teaching people to read and write. Its emphasis was on functional literacy – equipping learners to understand why they are deprived, how to access their rights, and how to improve their daily lives. Specific objectives included imparting the three R’s (reading, writing, and arithmetic), raising awareness about social issues like health, hygiene, family planning, and environmental sanitation, and promoting national integration and women’s equality. The mission set a clear numerical target: achieve a sustainable literacy rate of 75% by 2007, with special attention to disadvantaged groups – women, Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and backward classes.

Key achievements 🔗

The NLM’s primary vehicle was the Total Literacy Campaign (TLC), a decentralized, community-driven approach that mobilized local volunteers, NGOs, and government bodies. Literacy campaigns were launched across 597 districts, making 125.6 million people literate – 60% of whom were women, with significant representation from Scheduled Castes and Tribes. By the end of the Tenth Five Year Plan, the NLM had made 127.45 million persons literate, of whom 60% were women, 23% belonged to Scheduled Castes, and 12% to Scheduled Tribes. Overall literacy in India climbed from 52.21% in 1991 to 64.84% in 2001, and further to 72.98% by the 2011 Census.

The NLM’s innovative teaching-learning materials, built on a pedagogy called Improved Pace and Content of Learning (IPCL), earned it the UNESCO Noma Literacy Prize in 1999. In 2009, the mission evolved into the Saakshar Bharat Mission, which sharpened its focus on adult women in rural districts where female literacy remained below 50%, covering a target of 70 million adult non-literates. By 2018, around 7.64 crore learners had been certified as literate under this programme through assessments conducted by the National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS).

Continuing Education Programmes (CEPs): learning doesn’t stop at literacy 🔗

Achieving basic literacy is only the first step. A neo-literate adult who cannot sustain and apply those skills quickly slides back into functional illiteracy. This is exactly the gap that Continuing Education Programmes (CEPs) were designed to address.

What CEPs offer 🔗

The Scheme of Continuing Education (SCE) was launched in 1995 as a centrally funded initiative to provide learning opportunities to neo-literates who had completed basic literacy but needed further support in functional skills and vocational development. The scheme operates through a network of Continuing Education Centres (CECs) and Nodal CECs – local hubs typically set up in community halls, schools, or public spaces, making them accessible to learners from diverse backgrounds.

CECs serve as the backbone of adult education in India, offering a wide range of programmes: functional literacy, skill development, and social awareness. The most economically significant of these are Income Generating Programmes (IGPs), which provide vocational training in areas like tailoring, handicrafts, carpentry, and small-scale entrepreneurship – skills that can translate directly into sustainable livelihoods, especially in rural areas where formal employment is scarce.

CECs also run Quality of Life Improvement Programmes (QLIPs), which address health, family welfare, and civic awareness. The centres are managed by trained facilitators called Preraks and Assistant Preraks – often community leaders or local educators who tailor programmes to the specific needs of their learners. Under the New India Literacy Programme (NILP), launched for 2022-27 under the ULLAS initiative, continuing education has been expanded to cover foundational literacy, critical life skills, vocational skills, and basic education for all adults aged 15 and above.

The University Grants Commission (UGC) has also integrated continuing education into higher education institutions, enabling universities to extend their resources to underserved community groups through short-term, need-based programmes in vocational skills, professional competences, and remedial education – particularly for women in rural and slum areas, tribal communities, and workers in the unorganized sector.

Jan Shikshan Sansthan (JSS): skill development at the doorstep 🔗

If the NLM built the floor of literacy and CEPs extended it into lifelong learning, Jan Shikshan Sansthans (JSS) – literally “People’s Education Institutes” – added the vital bridge to economic empowerment. Their singular focus: deliver market-relevant vocational skills directly to the most marginalized communities, without requiring any educational qualification.

Origins and evolution 🔗

The JSS scheme has a longer history than most people realize. It was conceived in 1967 as Shramik Vidyapeeths (SVPs), initially set up to provide non-formal education and vocational training to industrial workers and their families in urban areas. The first SVP was initiated in Mumbai by the Bombay City Social Council Education Committee. As the NLM expanded literacy across rural India in the late 1980s and 1990s, the rationale for JSS shifted – there was now a large population of neo-literates who had tasted the value of education and were eager to convert that literacy into income. The scheme was expanded and renamed to cover non-literates, school dropouts, unemployed youth, women, and other weaker sections including SCs, STs, OBCs, minorities, and persons with disabilities.

What JSS delivers 🔗

JSS aims to provide vocational training to non-literates, neo-literates and school dropouts in rural regions by identifying skills that have a relevant market in that region. This is a key design principle – training is not standardized nationally but adapted to local livelihood opportunities. Courses span over 350 vocational trades, including cutting and tailoring, beauty culture, healthcare, fashion design, electrical and electronics, automobile repair, agriculture, handicrafts, bakery and confectionery, leather technology, and cottage industries.

Beyond skills, JSS uniquely integrates Life Enrichment Education (LEE) into its curriculum – covering health awareness, financial literacy, environment, and civic rights – to ensure that skill development leads to genuinely well-rounded empowerment. Training is delivered in a non-formal mode at the doorstep of the beneficiary, with 100% grant from the Government of India, under the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship’s Skill India Programme.

Scale and impact 🔗

Today, 293 JSSs are operational across 26 States and 7 Union Territories, having trained 26.38 lakh beneficiaries – of whom 21.63 lakh are women, representing 82% of the total. As of December 2025, a total of over 20 lakh beneficiaries have been trained under the JSS Scheme since FY 2022-23, with certificates aligned to the National Council for Vocational Education and Training (NCVET), enhancing both the credibility and portability of qualifications. A third-party evaluation by the Arun Jaitley National Institute of Financial Management in 2025 confirmed a positive impact on employment and income levels of JSS beneficiaries.

That said, challenges remain. The scheme has been critiqued for a weak pathway from training to assured employment – high enrolment and certification numbers do not always translate into sustainable jobs or earnings. There is also a tendency to focus on basic-level trades, which limits long-term career mobility for beneficiaries.

State Literacy Missions and Resource Centres: the grassroots engine 🔗

National programmes need local implementation machinery. This is where State Literacy Mission Authorities (SLMAs) and State Resource Centres (SRCs) become indispensable – they are the operational layer that translates central policy into ground-level action.

State Literacy Mission Authorities 🔗

Each state has its own State Literacy Mission Authority, which functions under the broad framework set by the National Literacy Mission Authority (NLMA). SLMAs are responsible for planning, coordinating, and monitoring literacy programmes within their states. They work through Zila Saksharta Samitis (District Literacy Committees), which bring literacy governance down to the district level. The model has proved effective when there is strong political will and community involvement – Tripura’s success story, for instance, is attributed to the active involvement of gram panchayats, NGOs, and local clubs under the close supervision of the SLMA, helping the state rise from 12th position in the 2001 Census to 4th in the 2011 Census with a literacy rate of 87.75%.

State Resource Centres (SRCs) 🔗

State Resource Centres are state-level institutions that work under the National Literacy Mission Authority to provide academic and technical support for adult education programmes. Their core responsibilities include training adult educators, developing locally relevant learning materials, organizing literacy drives, and providing resource support to SLMAs in implementing national schemes like Saakshar Bharat and ULLAS.

SRCs prepare the primers and curricula used in literacy campaigns – materials that are designed in locally dominant languages and tied to the learner’s lived reality: agriculture, health, local governance, and livelihood. Kerala’s State Resource Centre, for example, was established as early as 1978 and has since served as an autonomous institution providing academic and technical resource support to all agencies in the state engaged in adult and continuing education – a model that has contributed significantly to Kerala’s exceptionally high literacy rate.

SRCs also play a supervisory role, monitoring Total Literacy Campaigns through periodic reporting and field visits in coordination with state directorates of adult education. In states where SRCs have functioned proactively – developing innovative materials, running training programmes for volunteer teachers (Preraks), and engaging local NGOs – literacy outcomes have been measurably stronger.

How these institutions work together 🔗

These four pillars – NLM, CEPs, JSS, and State Literacy Missions with SRCs – are not isolated programmes. They form an interconnected ecosystem. The NLM creates the initial literate population. CEPs sustain and deepen those literacy skills while building functional competencies. JSS converts those competencies into vocational qualifications and income opportunities. And SLMAs with SRCs provide the state-level infrastructure, materials, and human resource capacity that make the entire system function at the grassroots. Together, they represent India’s most serious and sustained attempt to deliver education outside the formal school system – reaching those who fell through the cracks, often because poverty, geography, gender, or caste made formal schooling inaccessible.

The National Education Policy 2020 has reinforced this framework, recommending a five-component approach to adult education covering foundational literacy and numeracy, critical life skills, vocational skills, basic education equivalency, and continuing education – a vision that builds directly on the legacy of these institutions.

What do you think? Given that Jan Shikshan Sansthans train over 80% women beneficiaries, do you think India’s non-formal education system does enough to convert skill certification into actual employment opportunities for women? And with the ULLAS programme now pushing for digital and online delivery of adult education, how equipped are India’s rural and semi-urban communities to truly benefit from this shift?

References

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