Highest child population but least education expenditure

CRYCBGA survey data reflects state’s low priority on education for government school students

LUCKNOW:: Uttar Pradesh spends just R 7,613 annually on every child’s education in comparison to states like Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh who spend as much as R 28,630 and Rs 19,190 per annum respectively . Overall, the state itself spends a mere 17.2% of its total state budget on school education.

This was revealed in the budget analysis by CRY- Child Rights and You and Centre for Budgets, Governance and Accountability (CBGA) that looked at the overall scenario of budgetary spending (including central and states’ funds) on school education (Classes 1 to 12 ).

The given data clearly reflects the state’s low priority on education for children enrolled in government and government aided schools. The study examines in detail the composition of school budgets of 10 states: Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Odisha, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra.

While Uttar Pradesh has consistently increased its allocation on teacher salary – with 74.% of the education budget in 2015-16, the state’s investment on their training has not been at par. A mere 0.3% investment in teachers’ training may be a major impediment in achieving the learning outcomes, which have been far from expectations.

According to ASER 2016, only 24 % children studying in Class 5 could read Class 2 level text in government schools, while only 25% class 8 students could work out division sums.

This situation is worsened by the consistent shortage of teachers over the years. The state has the maximum vacancies of teachers among the study states. It also has the second highest number of single teacher schools, 17,602 primary and secondary schools (MHRD 2016). These gaps need to be bridged to address the issue of drop -outs and meet the desired learning outcomes.

Mainstreaming of children who are not attending educational institutes is also a concern. The state has 23.2% of such children, second highest among the states covered in the study.

However, only 0.03% of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) budget (2014-15) is allocated on mainstreaming of these children (Census 2011)

Furthermore, Uttar Pradesh which has 33% of all school going children from socio-economically weaker sections (SC/ST) and allocates a dismal 13.4% of its school education budget on schemes for such marginalised populations. This has consistently declined over the past four years

During 2015-16, the net enrolment ratio of girls was 85% at elementary level, 42% at secondary level and 33% at higher secondary level.

However, despite the low girl enrolment ratio, the state allocates a dismal 0.5% of the school education budget to girl child education.

This is a sharp decrease from the 2.6% that was allocated in 2012-13 . Odisha spends the highest with 5.9% followed by Madhya Pradesh with 5.8% allocation on educational intervention for girls

Soha Moitra, regional director ,North-CRY (Child Rights and You) said , “We need to delve deeper in analysing and identifying the gaps where deficiency of funds is visible. The state should lay greater emphasis on teacher recruitment, training and reaching out to socio-economically marginalised children”.

“India’s prevailing quantum of budgetary spending on education is inadequate not just because it falls short of the benchmark recommended decades ago by the Kothari Commission” said Subrat Das, director of CBGA, an independent, non-profit policy research organisation based in Delhi.