With poor budgetary allocations, children’s education will continue to face stumbling blocks

The constitutional right to school education and the RTE Act has so far failed to establish universal access to even elementary education, let alone higher education. While 68 per cent of the education budget goes to school education, the overall allocation itself of about Rs 4,71,000 crore in 2016-17 or 3.12 per cent of GDP is so small that this proportion has no meaning. In 1966, the Kothari Commission had mandated a minimum 6 per cent of GDP for education, but 50 years later, our governments are allocating much less than 4 per cent of the GDP. In fact, prior to RTE, at the turn of the millennium, we were spending more than 4 per cent of GDP.

The last two decades have also witnessed huge privatisation of education, including public resources being diverted to what are called grant-in-aid schools. This compression in public spending has impacted government schools adversely, leading to many poor families even withdrawing their children from state schools and bearing the burden of sending them to private schools. NSSO 71st round (2014) indicates that Rs 6,788 per student was spent on general education by households in contrast to  Rs 2,461 per student in 2008 (64th Round). The National Accounts Statistics records for 2016 Rs 3,11,455 crore spent out of pocket for education which comes to 2.28 per cent of GDP, an increase from 2.09 per cent of GDP in 2012. In fact, if we add the Out of Pocket Expenditure (OOPE) of households to the public expenditure, it almost adds up to the 6 per cent envisaged by the Kothari Commission report which, at today’s prices, should be around Rs 7,850 per capita. Our governments spend about half that amount. So, to remove this OOPE burden, a doubling of investment in education is what governments need to make for improved access to quality education.

Over the years, the Indian education scenario has been marked by a low level of spending in terms of GDP and the declining share of the Union government. This is clearly an issue of concern within the Right to Education context which had shifted education into the concurrent domain, and one would have expected the Centre’s share to have grown substantially in funding education at all levels. But that has not happened.

When we look across states, those with better education outcomes as per the ASER survey (2014) are spending much higher in per capita terms than the national average. Thus, the top five states in the ASER survey are Mizoram (Rs 11,034 per capita), Manipur (Rs 11,827), Himachal (Rs 8,558), Kerala (Rs 4,719) and Sikkim (Rs 14,230). Developed states like Punjab and Maharashtra are ranked at nine and 10 because of their low per capita spending, Rs 3,353 and Rs 4,059, respectively. So, clearly, the average per capita spending needs to be pushed up to at least Rs 8,000 per capita to improve both access to education as well as to strengthen the quality of education.

If we look specifically at school education, which accounts for more than two-thirds of the education budget, a recent study by CBGA and CRY (Public Financing of School Education in India) strengthens the argument of the need to up per capita spending. They have looked at per student spending on school education.

The Kendriya Vidyalayas, which can be used as a benchmark, spend Rs 32,263 per student annually (2014-15). Here too, the top spenders are Goa (Rs 67,041), Kerala (Rs 38,811), Sikkim (Rs 59,707), and Mizoram (Rs 42,202). The lowest are Uttar Pradesh (Rs 7,613) and Jharkhand (Rs 9,451). The national average is Rs 13,974 per student. With such low allocations, the study brings out the deficits of the public education system clearly — use of para teachers or not fully qualified teachers, poor investments in teacher training, in learning materials, and in the quality of physical infrastructure. So if we consider the Kendriya Vidyalaya as a gold standard for quality education in the public domain, then the education budget would have to be in the range of Rs 32,000 per student per year. This analysis then clearly indicates that the right to school education is far from realisation if the political commitments as expressed through budgetary allocations remain at the current levels. Budget allocations show that many states do try to maximise their resources for education, but it is the Union government which is failing to add its fair share to the education kitty. To achieve universal access to good quality education, both the Centre and state governments must endeavour to increase their budgets by at least one per cent of the GDP each.

The author is Country Coordinator, International Budget Partnership