I/II. http://www.hindu.com/2010/03/06/stories/2010030650631300.htm
*Education in the Union budget* Jandhyala B.G. Tilak Saturday, Mar 06, 2010 One looks forward to the Finance Minister's budget speech with a hope that it spells some new major initiatives and schemes for development, and that it might promise any major allocation of resources to any sector, besides fresh tax proposals. In the case of education sector, one might feel disappointed at the proposals made in the Union budget for 2010-11 on both counts. No new initiatives are proposed; no major reference to the importance of education is made, except referring to the enactment of the Right to Education. The proposals on allocation of resources also promise little new. Modest increase The total plan allocation for education sector has been raised by 15 per cent to Rs.42,000 crore, from Rs.36,400 crore proposed in the 2009-10 budget. (The revised estimate for 2009-10 is only Rs.30,600 crore.) At the current rate of inflation, the increase is very modest, if not insignificant. The allocation for elementary education is increased from Rs. 21,700 crore in 2009-10 to Rs. 25,000 crore in current budget — a meagre 15 per cent increase in nominal terms. This includes an allocation of Rs.15,000 crore for Sarva Siksha Abhiyan (SSA), the major flagship programme for universalisation of elementary education and Rs. 9,300 crore for the national scheme of mid-day meals — together accounting for 97 per cent of the total allocation for SSA. Among others, strengthening of teachers training institutions and quality education in madrassas are the two notable budget items that account for the rest. The increases in allocation of resources to SSA, the mid-day meal scheme and the elementary education as a whole seem to be only token increases. The allocations pale further, given the context of enactment of the Right to Education legislation by Parliament only a few months ago, which promised substantial improvement in access, quality and other dimensions of elementary education and provision of quality education to every child as a fundamental right. The implementation of the Right to Education Act requires enormous resources. Conservative estimates put the requirement as Rs. 171,000 crore for a five-year period, but the government seems to have decided, as per the media reports, to provide only Rs. 32,000 crore for the remaining two years of the eleventh five year plan for SSA, which is considered the main or the only scheme for the implementation of the Act. It appears the Ministry had sought an allocation of Rs. 40,000 crore in the current budget, and the Planning Commission seemed to have indicated its willingness to allocate Rs.35,000 crore; and the Ministry of Finance has allocated finally only Rs.15,000 crore for SSA and Rs. 9,300 crore for midday meals. In fact, two thirds of the total allocation to elementary education comes from the Prarambhik Siskha Kosh, which is essentially made of the revenues received from education cess for elementary education. Though the District Primary Education Project (DPEP) has been virtually closed, reliance on external assistance for elementary education continues. External aid for elementary education increased from Rs. 683 crore in 2004-05 to Rs. 1,584 crore in 2008-09. In the allocation made for SSA in the current budget foreign aid which is of the tune of Rs. 1,028 crore, constitutes about seven per cent; in addition, foreign aid forms 90 per cent of the Rs. 46 crore proposed for Mahila Samkhya. On the whole, the overall allocations to elementary education may put serious question marks on the seriousness of the Union government on the implementation of the Right to Education Act, which is yet to be notified. The allocation to secondary education was least raised — from Rs. 4,600 crore to Rs. 4,700 crore. For universalisation of secondary education, the Rashtriya Madhyamik Siksha Abhiyan (RMSA) was launched recently. While Rs. 1,354 crore was allocated to it in the last year's budget, only 40 per cent was spent as per the revised estimate. Navodaya Vidyalayas, RMSA and the scheme of setting up of 6,000 model schools at block level as a bench mark of excellence can be regarded as the three major budget items in secondary education in the current budget. Of the 6,000 model schools, 3,500 were to be set up under public-private partnerships modes which are yet to be finalised. The National Means-cum-Merit Scholarship scheme was launched in 2008-09, according to which a scholarship of Rs. 6,000 per annum per head is awarded to meritorious students of economically weaker sections to enable them to continue their studies and complete at least senior secondary education. In 2009-10 Rs. 750 crore was allocated to the scheme. But as per the revised estimates only Rs. 253 crore was spent. One might expect such a scheme that aims at promoting equity and merit, to receive serious attention in the budget allocations. Surprisingly, the allocation to the scheme has been slashed in the current budget to Rs. 90 crore — to about one-third of the revised estimate and 12 per cent of the of the budget estimate of 2009-10. Allocation to adult education has been more than doubled increasing it from Rs. 450 crore to Rs. 1,300 crore, the major beneficiary being the recently restructured and renamed Sakshar Bharat Programme. For higher education Allocations to higher education (general and technical) are also modest; they increased from the budget estimate of Rs. 9,600 crore in 2009-10 to Rs. 11,000 crore in the present budget. The total plan and non-plan allocation to technical education increased from Rs. 5,400 crore to Rs. 6,000 crore. For setting up of new IITs, again Rs. 400 crore has been allocated, like in the previous year. A significant increase in the allocation has been made for upgrading existing/setting up of new polytechnics. An allocation of Rs. 220 crore has been made for the same, compared to Rs. 45 crore in the previous budget. Non-plan allocations to the UGC, IITs and IIMs etc., have been reduced, though there is a small increase in plan allocations. This might mean that the higher educational institutions will need to either raise student fees or face a difficult situation when it comes to maintaining their infrastructure. More importantly, the budget allocations do not indicate any major restructuring of the University Grants Commission (UGC) or the All-India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), as the total plan and non-plan allocation to the UGC remains more or less the same around Rs. 7,300 crore and that to the AICTE nearly Rs. 200 crore. There is, of course, a separate provision of Rs. 40 crore for the establishment of tribunals, accreditation authority, the National Commission on Higher Education and Research (NCHER) and National Finance Corporation. The draft bills to set up some of these bodies are believed to be at an advanced stage, getting clearance from the cabinet committee etc. The proposed NCHER is to subsume the role of UGC, AICTE and other similar bodies. Further, in recent years organisations like the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) were subject to a thorough review and experts have recommended major revamping of the organisation and its institutes. The somewhat stable allocation of Rs.50 crore to ICSSR and equally stable allocations to other research institutes indicate no major thinking on the development of research in social sciences in these organisations. The only scheme that attracted a huge allocation in higher education — Rs.500 crore is the scheme of interest subsidy to educational loans. This scheme, which seems not to have taken off during the last year, is meant to provide subsidy to the students of weaker sections to the extent of interest payments for the duration of the studies. While the scheme needs to be welcomed, it also indicates the government's intention to increasingly rely on student loans as an effective method of funding higher education, rather than providing general subsidies or scholarships. On the whole, the proposals made in case of education in the 26th Feb 2010 Union budget, to say the least, do not indicate any special significance being attached to education — neither to the Right to Education Act, nor to the recent proposals on universalisation of secondary education, nor to the reforms being discussed in higher education. *( Jandhyala B.G. Tilak is professor at the National University of Educational Planning and Administration, New Delhi. Email: [email protected] ). *II. http://www.indianexpress.com/news/making-the-right-to-education-real/587507/index.html Making the right to education real *Vinod Raina* Posted online: Saturday , Mar 06, 2010 at 0226 hrs **The Budget for 2010-11 was presented precisely 10 days after the Right to Education Act was notified, for implementation from April 1, 2010. That the government took nearly six months to notify its implementation after the presidential assent in August is indicative of the backroom tussles that must have taken place regarding its funding. The timing of its notification therefore raised hopes that the budget would reflect adequate importance to the only fundamental right to be included in the Constitution since Independence. At a first glance, those hopes seem to have been belied. The allocation for its first year of implementation works out to Rs 15,000 crore out of the total budget of Rs 31,036 crore sanctioned to the department of school education and literacy. This appears woefully inadequate; less than half the estimated cost of Rs 34,000 crore per year (Rs 1.71 lakh crore for five years) as calculated by the National University for Educational Planning and Administration (NUEPA). It should be obvious that the Act is front-loaded in terms of expenditure: a) recruit and deploy teachers at 30:1 ratio in every school within six months of notification, b) neighbourhood schools of specified quality for every child within three years, c) all teachers to be trained to a national norm within five years of notification. All three require substantial financial inputs in the initial years and form the basis of NUEPA estimates. So why did it take six months to thrash out an allocation that is less than half the estimated cost for the coming year? In the absence of public information regarding the backroom parleys, one can only guess. The prime factor could be the inability of the state governments to absorb and expend sanctioned amounts at the required pace. It is no secret that many states, including Bihar, UP, Orissa, Assam and West Bengal have not been able to utilise SSA grants of previous years, particularly for teacher recruitment and classroom construction, the two most important targets to be met under the Act. Estimates suggest that nearly Rs 10,000 crore already sanctioned remain unutilised, and added to the budget allocation of Rs 15,000 crore, works out to Rs 25,000 crore. Which is still nearly Rs 10,000 crore short of the estimated first year cost. The finance minister indicated that around Rs 3,675 crore have been directly allocated by the Finance Commission to the states for elementary education (as per the provisions of section 7(4) of the Act). This would further close the gap between the estimate and allocation. However, initial estimates prepared by Bihar and Orissa for implementing the Act are as high as Rs 28,000 and Rs 16,000 crore respectively. The Orissa school education minister has publicly stated that unless the Centre makes adequate financial provisions, his state will not be in a position to implement the Act from April 1. Being a concurrent subject, the Centre and states are both responsible for implementing the Act. The tug of war between them is part of the history of this Act, with the Centre asking the states to bring in their own respective Acts in 2006 based on a model Bill. But now that it is a Central legislation, and overrides existing state legislations, the Centre has to assume a greater responsibility for its implementation. Equally, the states have to perk up and improve their delivery systems so that sanctioned funds do not remain unutilised. An area of special concern here is that of recruitment of teachers. The practice of engaging cheap, untrained and even unqualified teachers at times has boomeranged. After a few years of service, they unionise and start asking for enhanced salaries leading to litigation, with courts staying further recruitments. This is one of the reasons teacher recruitment funds have remained unutilised in states that badly require more teachers. The only way under the Act is to move towards a cadre of trained and qualified elementary education teachers, without resorting to cheap teachers, which anyway is a short term measure since the courts normally pass judgments in favour of the aggrieved contractual teachers. This change would be necessary in order to recruit lakhs of teachers in the six-month framework prescribed by the Act, and then move rapidly towards completing their training requirements within the next five years. Just as the Centre has responsibility for providing adequate funds, the states also need to go beyond asking for more funds and demonstrate their ability to utilise the funds within time frames that are legal and part of the fundamental right of children now. Once the pace of expenditure is at par with the time targets of the Act, the HRD ministry would be justified to demand additional funds from the supplementary budget during the year, which could further narrow the difference between requirement and allocation. However in order to set the pace, the UPA needs to wake up to the fact that the implementation of this fundamental right is not the job only of the concerned ministry, namely HRD, but equally so of the finance ministry and planning commission, and ministries that are directly implicated in its implementation, namely, labour, for issues of child labour; women and child welfare, for children below six years (under section 11 of the Act) and monitoring by the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights; social empowerment and justice, for issues related to curbs on social discrimination in the Act, water and sanitation for providing water and toilets in each school, tribal welfare, which runs schools in many states; and panchayati raj, since most of the local authorities under the act are likely to be panchayati raj institutions. Unless the state governments and these ministries work cohesively in a mission mode for the implementation of the Act, the approach is likely to be fragmented, or worse, full of friction. To demonstrate the UPA’s seriousness, it would be befitting to bring all the chief ministers and ministers of the directly involved ministries and others to a conference before April 1, to be addressed by the prime minister, that galvanises the concerned implementers and sets up permanent inter-state and inter-ministerial processes to ensure that an Act that took 100 years to come (Gopal Krishna Gokhale unsuccessfully tried for such an Act in the Imperial Assembly in 1911) is implemented with earnestness. *The writer, an educationist and member of CABE, helped draft the Act and worked for its introduction in Parliament* -- Peace Is Doable -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. 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