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State govts spend most on teachers, least on infra

Educationally under-performing states have focussed on school education in the post RTE Act phase

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A study on budgetary spending in education conducted by Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability (CBGA) and Child Rights and You (CRY) reveals that most government schools devote most of their budget to teachers’ salary rather than infrastructure, or teachers’ training. The study looks into the overall scenario of budgetary spending (including central and states’ funds) on education from Class 1 to 12.

“India’s prevailing quantum of budgetary spending on education is inadequate not just because it falls short of the benchmark recommended by the Kothari Commission, but also because of the paucity of funds for almost all important areas of public provisioning of school education,” says Subrat Das, Director, CBGA.

“Be it availability of teachers, their training, monitoring of schools, intervention for children from marginalised sections or those for strengthening community engagement with schools, there is a shortage of funds and this is glaring in most of the poorer states,” says Das.

The study has examined in detail the composition of school budgets of ten states including — Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh.

Based on the findings of the study, Maharashtra spends maximum amount of its education budget. In the year 2014-15, the Maharashtra state had spent over Rs 28,000 per child while in the year, 2015-16 Rs 18,000 per child was spent by various schools in the state.

Even though it is said most civil service aspariants are from Bihar, but the emphasis on primary education is poor finds the study. Bihar and its neighbouring state Jharkhand spend the least amount of money from their budget on per child.

The macro picture shows that the poorer and educationally under-performing states have accorded higher priority to school education than the better performing states in the post RTE Act phase.

According to the study, the ‘per student’ budgetary spending across states varied from Rs 9,583 (in Bihar) to Rs 28,630 (in Maharashtra) in 2014-15. But Kendriya Vidyalayas and Navodaya Vidyalayas, which are considered as ‘model’ government-run schools in terms of providing quality education, spent Rs 27,150 and Rs 85,000 per student per annum respectively (in 2015-16), which is much higher than what each state spends on per student.

Examining the priorities within the school education budget from the perspective of children from Schedule Caste, Schedule Tribe, Other Backward Class, minority community, economically weaker sections, and children with disabilities, the study points that better funding of interventions targeted towards them would make the education system more inclusive.

The proportion of expenditure meant exclusively for girl child is less than one per cent of the school-education budget in many states such as Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh.

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