Focusing on just 1% schools, Union budget ‘completely ignores’ school education sector

By Mitra Ranjan* 
The Right to Education (RTE) Forum’s National Convenor Gautam Badyopadhyay has said that the Union budget ignores the school education sector. “Far from delivering 6% GDP for education that the government has repeatedly promised, this year’s budget brings neither significant focus nor new money for the education India’s 431 million citizens under 18”, he underlined.
This is the first budget after the recent LS elections and the newly formed Government. We do not see any change in the allocations made for school education in the Interim Budget tabled on 1st February, 2024. Meagre increase in the budget of the Department of School Education from Rs.68,804.85 crore in 2023-24(BE) to Rs. 73,008.10 crore in 2024-25(I)(BE) is inadequate, a 6.1% increase which is just ahead of inflation.
In absolute terms, this Rs. 4,203 crore increase is largely on account of allocation in the budget for Rs. 6,050 crore for PM SHRI (exemplar schools). In other words, these new funds are concentrated in less than 1% of India’s schools (14,500 schools out of India’s nearly 1.4 million schools) and will focus on creating pockets of excellence for local elites, not ensure equitable quality education for everyone.
Similarly, while the midday meal (MDM) budget has increased by Rs. 867 crore between 2023-24 (BE) and 2024-25(I)(BE), the actual spending in 2022-23 (Rs. 1,2681 crore) was higher than this year's budget estimate (Rs. 12,647 crore). The focus on ensuring the availability of workplace creches in the budget speech was, however, a positive development from the perspective of ensuring early childhood care and education, provided efforts are made that these adhere to quality and safety standards which would again need more budget.
“This year’s focus when it comes to education was on skilling. This is short-sighted, since it ignores the true reasons for the poor employability of India’s graduates- the poor quality of education they receive in school. The government should have instead focussed on building strong foundations by investing in quality, equitable and inclusive school education which would have enabled India’s youth to emerge from the education system capable of taking up good jobs and realising their full potential,” Bandyopadhyay said.
Expressing shear disappointment, he further said that it clearly shows that the government has no priority for education in Budget. Criticising the Union Budget, the Forum said that the budget should have given a roadmap to strengthen the public education system and ensure ground implementation of the right to free and compulsory education as well as its extension from pre-primary to higher secondary. (RTE compliance is still at 25.5% at national level as per data provided in the Parliament on 2nd August 2021 based on U Dise Data).
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*National Secretariat, Right to Education Forum