Is There Enough Public Resource for School Education ? Examining the Available Evidences

Published By: Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability

The enactment of RTE Act, 2009 imposes a duty on the Indian states to fulfill every child?s right to elementary education. Education is also a stand-alone goal among SDGs, which India is one of the signatories. As education is in „concurrent list?, both Centre and State Governments have responsibility to achieve the goal of universalization of elementary education. Along with many other factors, financing of education is an important factor for provisioning of quality education in school. It has long been argued that public provisioning of school education is imperative and it needs more resources. But there is a counter argument from policy makers that the government provides enough resources for school education and the challenges do not lie in allocation, rather the problem is with underutilisation. In fact for several years now, the whole narrative of education is circling around quality with little focus on financing. The deteriorating learning level of students is the major concern of India?s school education system. Hence, the focus of education policies is eventually shifting from input based to outcome based. For the first time, a consolidated Outcome Budget, covering all Ministries and Departments, is presented along with the other Budget documents in Union Government?s Budget speech for 2017-18. The more recent example is NITI Aayog?s Action Agenda for three years. The Aayog has strategized its action agenda for school education keeping „improvement in learning outcomes? as central objective for school education. The document argues that better infrastructure, lower pupil-teacher ratio, higher teacher salary or better teacher training are ineffective policy measures for improving learning outcomes in the present context.

Author(s): Protiva Kundu | Posted on: Oct 24, 2017 | Views() | Download (136)


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