New Delhi: Government spending on school education is making its way back to pre-Covid levels if the funds released for the sector in 2022-23 are anything to go by. The Ministry of Education released 56 per cent (Rs 58,928.02 crore) of its total budget of Rs 1,04,277.22 crore for school education, the highest ever, ThePrint has learnt.
The education ministry had utilised Rs 38,627.18 crore of the budget by the first week of February, the government’s Demands for Grants report shows.
Ministry sources told ThePrint that the school education department had utilised an additional fund of nearly Rs 19,000 crore in March alone. While this is the utilisation figure for the ministry, state-wise break-up of the data will take longer to collate and is still unavailable, the sources said.
The funds were released keeping in mind post-Covid learning interventions as well as the need to upgrade school infrastructure and promote digital learning, sources said.
“Information and Communication Technology (ICT) interventions that were necessary post-Covid have also been strengthened, including installation of smartboards in classrooms, providing internet facilities and computers in schools, among other things,” a ministry source said. “Financial support for teachers, training of teachers, and betterment of Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalayas (KGBVs), etc. will also be covered under it.”
KGBVs are upper primary residential schools meant for girls from economically weaker sections (EWS).
According to ministry sources, the largest portion of the funds — Rs 32,514.69 crore (over 55 per cent of the total fund released) — were released for the Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), the Modi government’s flagship education scheme. This was marginally more than the revised estimate of Rs 32,151.66 crore for FY23 and came on the back of a corresponding demand from states, the sources said.
The actual budget allocation for the scheme for the fiscal was 37,383 crore.
Before this, the allocation for school education was highest (Rs 52,592.48 crore) in 2019-20. Then, too, the largest chunk — Rs 32,376.53 crore, or 61.56 per cent of the total fund released — went to the SSA, the sources said.
‘Back to normal’
The SSA is an overarching programme for school education extending from preschool to Class 12. It is primarily aimed at providing quality education and enhancing learning outcomes, bridging social and gender gaps in school education and ensuring equity and inclusion at all levels of school education. It also supports states in the implementation of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009.
The scheme, which in 2019 subsumed three existing programmes — the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan, and Teacher Education — has always received the largest share of the school education budget.
Apart from the SSA, the school education department sponsors schemes such as the Midday Meal Scheme (now renamed Pradhan Mantri Poshan Shakti Nirman), teacher training schemes, as well as provides support to autonomous bodies like the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) and Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), among others.
In 2021-22, the ministry had to surrender Rs 5,146 crore of the total school education budget against the revised estimates of Rs 51,969.95 crore. Sources attributed this to pandemic-driven restrictions, saying that states didn’t raise the demand for more funds because of school closures.
It’s in this light that the higher release of funds this year is significant — ministry sources said that it is being viewed as a “back to normal” situation.
In addition, the ministry also hopes that the higher budget would help push post-Covid interventions.
In February 2022, the ministry had sent a Covid recovery plan to all the states, asking them to conduct bridge courses for students to make up for the pandemic-induced learning losses.
It had earmarked funds for post-Covid recovery activities as well, a ministry official told ThePrint.
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
Also Read: Govt shortlists 9,000 schools for ‘PM-SHRI’ — plan to set up model schools with smart classes