By Dr. Gyan Pathak
Poor households of the country have increasingly been put into precarious conditions as far as education of their children are concerned. Public educational institutions, which are the only destination for poor students, are deteriorating in imparting quality education due to a range of issues including insufficient budget among others. Even fundamental right to education has not been honoured, which is reflected in decline in budgetary allocation for Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan compared to 2020-21, while population is increasing. Education, beyond this primary level, have been made costlier through a range of policies, a general trend under PM Modi rule since 2014. Tuition fees have been increased and taxes have been imposed on educational services and input materials that have made reading and writing materials unaffordably costly for poor students.
Such an environment has been creating two distinct worlds of privileged and unprivileged students. The entire education system is heading toward disempowering the unprivileged students through blocking their paths to quality and universal education – right from simple reading and writing materials to quality and affordable educational institutions. Union Budget 2023-24 should therefore must increased budgetary support to public education system, and ensure that private educational institutions also must earmark certain number of seats for unprivileged students since most of them derive benefits from public resources and certain other facilities from the government.
The last three years under the shadow of COVID-19 is marked with huge learning losses at all level of education. Union government is yet to come out with effective programmes to make up this learning loss. The crisis has led to a new system of education which is known as online education. Online and offline education are now to stay. However, poor students are still not able to access online education or virtual classroom due to lack of proper electricity and internet connectivity and instruments like mobile, laptops, or desktops.
Huge digital gaps are there not only between students of poor and rich households but also between the urban and rural areas. This gap is also visible between girls and boy students, and the students from educated and uneducated households. This is a measure are of concern which need to be properly addressed now since the future economies and employments would be heavily dependent on traditional and digital knowledge, skills and trainings. It would be very unfair if we do not provide equal educational access but would insist on ‘competition’ between the privileged and unprivileged, only to insure that students from privileged households only succeed an all spheres of life.
Budget 2022-23 had increased Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan budget by Rs6000 crore, but was still below the budgetary allocation for 2020-21. Budgetary allocation for teachers training and adult education was reduced to almost half from Rs250 crore in 2021-22 to Rs127 crore in 2022-23. Union government must take note of the new requirement of teachers training in the light of hybrid (physical classroom and digital) education, and also for the effective implement of the provisions of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 right from pre-primary to higher education level. Teachers and students both need to be technology enabled.
Imposing GST on educational services is indeed a bad idea which includes Ed-Tech, training, coaching and other related educational activities. Taxing education is a greed and no civil society should tax it. Union Budget 2023-24 must remove all taxes on services and goods that make education costly and unaffordable for majority of Indians at a time when more than 81 crore people out of 140 crore population survive on 5 kg free foodgrains per month.
The NEP2020 emphasizes a new framework for pre-primary education. How can it be implemented if there would not be any clear policy for funding and appropriately trained teachers and other personnels? The Union Budget 2023-24 therefore clearly needs to have appropriate allocation in this regard.
NEP lays much emphasis on compulsory and vocational training from secondary education level. It would need huge funding and trained human resources if we really want our students to have an exposure to vocational education from their early school days.
Education sector expenditure have been almost stagnant over the last few years at 3.1 per cent of the GDP. According to the Economic Survey for 2021-22, it was only 2.8 per cent in 2019-20, and 3.1 per cent in 2020-21 revised estimate and 3.1 per cent in 2021-22 budgeted estimate. The NEP-2020 has said that the government would make efforts to increase it to 6 per cent of the GDP, but did not mention the year by which Modi government intends to do it. Universal school education remains a dream.
NEP 2020 aims for universalization of education from pre-school to secondary level with 100 per cent gross enrolment ratio in school education by 2030, will bring 2 crore out-of-school children back into the mainstream, gross enrolment ratio in higher education to be raised to 50 per cent by 2035 with 3.5 crore seats to be added in higher education, among others. All these are easier said than done. Union Budget 2023-24 will need to considerably enhance the educational expenditure if there are to be achieved.
Among these sugar-quoted words a contradiction exists that says every college would develop into either an autonomous degree-granting college or a constituent college of a university. It only means making education even more costly, since the burden of funding education would be ultimately shifted to students, and only those student could be able to access higher education who can afford it.
Budget allocation for education in 2022-23 was only Rs 1,04,278 crore (2.6 per cent of the total Union budget) as against Rs 93,224 crore (2.7 per cent of the Union budget) in 2021-22. However, the revised estimate for 2021-22 shows that the Centre spent only Rs 88,002 crore which was only 2.3 per cent of the total budget, even less than 2.4 per cent in 2020-21 (actual). We hope that Centre must utilize the allocated fund and refrain from making higher allocation only to boast that allocation has been increased. Common people need access to education and the Union Budget 2023-24 must ensure it, and must not left them behind by making education further unaffordable for them. (IPA Service)
