Chennai: Quality education remains a far cry

CHENNAI: The central government, which has marginally increased budgetary allocation for the education sector to Rs 85,010 crore in 2018-19 budget has attracted criticism from the educationists for lack of vision in improving the quality of a school and higher education in the country.

Finance minister Arun Jaitley has announced a mega scheme  for building infrastructure in educational institutions to the tune of '1 lakh crore, which will be invested in the course of next four years and 1000 scholarships for B. Tech students in the budget.

But, the allotment was increased less than 4% ('3,142 crores) compared to the revised estimate of current financial year.  

“There is nothing new in this budget. There are a few announcements like 24 new medical colleges and Navodaya pattern schools for tribal children. There is no investment made for any structural reforms in education,” said Professor Krishna Kumar, former director of NCERT.  

The amount of money being offered for SSA was almost the same as last year. “It is disappointing as implementing the Right to Education act requires considerable additional funds from the centre, especially in northern states where we are quite bad. In the context of our rural schools, we have multiple problems like maintenance, the appointment of teachers. But the budget doesn’t even recognise or acknowledge issues of RTE which requires more support from the centre,” he pointed out. He further said “the allocation of funds for teacher training is inadequate where there is the shortage of trained teachers and working teachers’ quality has to be greatly improved,” he added.

On higher education, he said, “There is no attempt to recognise the crisis in public universities. UGC funds were cut last year and there is no attempt to compensate that cut.”

Anna University’s former Vice-Chancellor E. Balagurusamy has called for a relook in the fund's allotment to the education sector in the budget.
“The allotment of '35,000 crore to higher education is very low. In our country, higher education quality is very poor as the universities are lacking basic infrastructures like laboratories and classrooms. The allocation has to be increased at least three times more for improving higher education,” he said.

He further said 1000 scholarships for B. Tech students will not make any improvement as the number is very small. “There is no vision to convert our universities into world-class universities. The quality of school education and higher education is very bad throughout the country. The education was completely neglected in the budget,” he stressed.

However, IIT Kanpur former chairman M. Ananthakrishnan said the central government has not neglected education in the budget. 

“They have announced a new scheme to the tune of '1.2 lakh crore to improve the infrastructure at educational institutions. There are other schemes like scholarships to B. Tech students, which improve the research,” he said. Senior educationist S.S. Rajagopalan said, “the RTE Act came into effect seven years ago. But the act is yet to be fully implemented. There is no major announcement regarding education in this budget.”