Can India's education budget fund increased spending in new policy?

International News

The government’s Draft New Education Policy released May 2019 suggests increasing spending on education from 10% of total government expenditure to 20% by 2030. However, there is no funding available for such an increase in India’s current education budget.
Further, since 2015, government spending on school education has actually decreased after correcting for inflation, according to an analysis of state and central education finances over the years.
Good public education is a fundamental right in India, and there is a strong correlation between public investment in education, child development and empowerment. For instance, states that spent more on education, such as Himachal Pradesh and Kerala, scored higher on the empowerment index, which takes into account attendance levels at primary, upper primary, secondary and senior secondary levels, as well as indicators linked with gender equality such as sex ratio at birth and early marriage.
*Year: Average expenditure on school education for the period 2012-13 to 2018-19
**Note: This is computed by the Centre for Budget and Policy Studies taking six indicators (four relating to education and 2 relating to empowerment, sourced from National Sample Survey Office’s 71st round and National Family Health Survey, 2015-16, respectively)
Central government’s education budget reduced since 2014

 Even as the government promises an increase in spending on education, the share of the union budget allocated to education fell from 4.14% in 2014-15 to 3.4% in 2019-20, the period during which the Bharatiya Janata Party headed the central government, according to budget documents from 2014 to 2020...Read More

1 in 6 elementary school teachers not professionally trained in India

Economy & Policy News:

With nearly one in six elementary school teachers not professionally trained, India must improve its spending on teacher training--just 2% of the 2018-19 budget allocated for Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan (‘holistic education programme’) was spent on teachers’ training institutes.The projected budget allocation for the programme for 2019-20 is estimated to be Rs 34,489 crore, an increase of 10.5% from the 2018-19 budget estimate, according to a medium-term expenditure projection statement presented to parliament in August 2018.
Launched in 2018 by combining Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (‘education for all’), Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (‘national middle education mission’) and teachers’ education programmes, Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan aims to provide support for both pre-service and in-service teacher training.
Teacher training is imperative for improving learning outcomes in Indian classrooms, as acknowledged by the Three Years Action Agenda of the government think-tank NITI Aayog, as well as in the 2018 budget speech that emphasised on the need for professionally qualified teachers for school education reform.

 Only half of 10- to 11-year-olds in India can read a grade II level text (appropriate for seven- to eight-year-olds), as IndiaSpend reported on January 25, 2019. In rural India, almost half of grade V students cannot read a grade II text and more than 70% them cannot carry out simple division...Read More

As India's quality of schooling plummets, here's how Budget 2019 can help

Interim Budget 2019:

India stepped up its spending on school education by 9.35% from 2014-15 (Rs 45,722.41 crore) to 2018-19 (Rs 50,000 crore). But education’s share in the total union budget fell from 2.55% to 2.05% in this period, according to an IndiaSpend analysis of budgetary data.

On February 1, 2019, when the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) presents its last budget before general elections, it will have to address a critical issue in India’s school education: Its quality compares poorly with many south Asian and BRICS nations even though India spends a higher percentage of its gross domestic product (GDP) on education.In rural India, almost half of grade V students cannot read a grade II text and more than 70% them cannot do division, said the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2018. These numbers indicate a fall in standards over the last 10 years.

Why schooling needs special attention this budget

The school education system in India is facing a shortage of trained teachers and a lack of proper infrastructure. Here are some factors that need to be addressed in the budget:
92,275 government schools at both elementary and secondary level have only one teacher to teach all the subjects, Satya Pal Singh, minister of state for human resource development told the Lok Sabha on January 1, 2019.


 1 in every 4 schools in rural India does not have an electricity connection, as per ASER and almost the same number lacks a library. A computer is available only in 21.3% of rural schools.250.53 million children in India are in the age group of 6-15 in 2017, as per government data, and in need of a good education.