New Delhi: An analysis of the budget tabled in Parliament on Wednesday shows an 8 per cent increase in allocation for school education – a substantial increase educationists hope will go towards reversing the learning loss caused by the pandemic.
The allocation to the school education department of the education ministry has gone up to Rs 68,805 crore for FY24 from Rs 63,449.37 crore in FY23. Of this, the largest increase has been in funding for states and teacher training programmes.
Budget for States for Strengthening Teaching-Learning and Results (STARS) – a program of the education ministry for training teachers – has been increased by 45 per cent to Rs 800 crore in 2023-24 from Rs 550 crore in the current financial year. What is more important, however, is that this is a 155 per cent increase from the Rs 313 crore that the program received in 2021-22, the year of the pandemic.
Another item which saw substantial growth is grants-in-aid to State Governments and Union Territories. States were allocated Rs 45,234 crore under the head in Budget 2023, a 19 per cent increase from last year’s Rs 37,929.5 crore. This is also a significant increase of 33 per cent from 2021-22 when states received a grant of Rs 33,916 crore.
Grants to Union Territories have also gone up to Rs 2,011 crore – an increase of 8 per cent over the previous budget’s Rs 1,853.5 crore and a massive 67 per cent increase from two years ago (2021-22).
States use the grants allocated to them for various purposes, which include improving infrastructure and quality of education.
The budget comes a month after education nonprofit Pratham released its findings about the severe loss of education due to the closure of schools during the pandemic. Pratham’s Annual Survey of Education Report (ASER) said that basic reading level The number of children dropped to pre-2012 levels due to the pandemic.
Pratham CEO Rukmini Banerjee said: “The increase in budget allocation should ideally be used to address the loss of learning during Covid. States use their budget in different ways and I hope that the increased budget will be used to improve the quality of education and focus on using traditional methods.
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‘positive step’
The budget also promises to set up a national digital library at the panchayat and ward levels.
Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in her budget said, “A National Digital Library for Children and Adolescents will be set up, which will facilitate the availability of quality books across geographies, languages, genres and levels.” speech Wednesday.
“States will be encouraged to set up physical libraries at panchayat and ward levels for them and provide infrastructure to access national digital library resources,” he added.
He further said that in order to build a reading culture and compensate for the loss of learning in times of pandemic, the National Book Trust, Children’s Book Trust, and other sources to provide and replenish non-curriculum titles in regional languages and English would be encouraged. physical library.
Pratham’s Rukmini Banerjee believes that such physical libraries will Go a long way to address learning loss.
Educationists also see the increased allocation for teacher training programs as a positive step. “An increase in teachers’ training program is certainly going to help as states do not have money to train teachers, so this will go a long way in helping address the learning loss,” Manisha Priyam , a professor at the Delhi-based National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration (NIEPA) told ThePrint.
he further said that Increased grants to states will help only if it is used for reforms quality of education.
RCM Reddy, managing director and chief executive of online learning platforms Schoolnet India and Learnet Skills, said it was “reassuring” to see that teachers’ training has been given prominence in the budget.
“We look forward to witnessing its effective implementation in the year ahead. This will help improve the quality of teaching and create better opportunities for students,” he told ThePrint.
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
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