Question

Indian government expenditure on education

Answer 1

Spending on education as a share of the central government’s total budgeted expenditure has been falling for the past three years. Compared to 2013-14, the last year of UPA, when education got 4.57% of the total expenditure, there has been a steady decline — 3.65% in 2016-17, according to this Budget’s revised estimate, with the estimated outlay for the coming year showing a minor uptick at 3.71%.
Looking at education spend as a share of the GDP, which is what international trackers do, the trend is clear — having dipped from 0.63% of the GDP in 2013-14 to 0.47% projected by the government for 2017-18.

Although budgeted expenditure for the ministry of human resource development (MHRD) has been increased over the previous year by about 8%, this is illusory because inflation of about 5-6% would neutralise most of it.

Since 2016-17, the government has rejigged the sharing pattern of central schemes in key sectors, including secondary and higher education, with lower outlays in the Budget and more direct transfers in keeping with the 14thFinance Commission’s recommendation.

This would have marginally contributed to a decline in the total education outlay as allocation for two schemes concerning secondary and higher education — the Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan and the Rashtriya Uchchtar Shiksha Abhiyan — was about 7% of the total education outlay in 2015-16, the last year before new sharing pattern.

These are not mere numbers. Their importance for India lies in that public spending on education is a must for making it available for all, and in better quality. While government policymakers since UPA’s times have been congratulating themselves for bringing almost all the children aged 6-13 years to elementary school, little attention has been paid to the fact that after this stage, it is downhill all the way. Gross enrolment ratios (number of students in school at a particular stage as a percentage of all children in the concerned age group) rapidly deteriorate after elementary school, going down to just 54% by senior secondary level. In other words, roughly half the children are out of school by the time they are senior school age. This works out to about 35 million kids out of school.

In higher education, the situation is much worse, with an enrolment ratio of just 24% for the 18-23 age group. This includes distance education students.

In most advanced countries, the ratio is close to the 50% mark. So, about 71million youth are still out of the higher education system. Enrolment ratios are lower for Dalits and Adivasis, and dropout rates higher. So they need to be reached out to, especially in remote areas. School infrastructure and teachers need to be provided for. NGOs and corporate bodies can’t handle this. But the government has made an increase of only 4% for the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan.

Answer 2

Answer:

India spends 4.6 per cent of its total GDP on education, and ranks 62nd in total public expenditure on education per student, according to IMD. Experts have called for raising the education expenditure to 6 per cent, which is also in sync with Niti Aayog's target to improve education quality in India.