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Friday 13 January 2012

Only six per cent of elementary education budget spent on children,points out survey

This partly explains why 95% children do not get education to help them become domestic help without extra training for years!

Because there is simply no "education" for the poor, forget about "quality education", India is unable to become a nation it has an opportunity to become. In case we could educate the 95% to the level of high school that the world accepts as a base line for the OECD countries,in terms of what they learn and get the skills to deal with, India GDP in the next 20 years can grow 10 folds.

Denying Quality Education that makes everyone contribute to their potential, rather than chained to the centuries we left behind, is one of the worst human rights abuse we do not even call human rights.

The human rights violation of an individual is like a wound on the skin but denying the education that can help people join the times human evolution has progressed to is like a cancer of Human Rights abuse.

This is a gross violation of the constitutional responsibilities of the Government that we have been ignoring for the past 65 years. 

But we are at a point when we need to take a fresh look at it and change all that and ensure that everyone gets the education they are interested in.

It will require us to rethink, not just go for a patchwork solution that we are so happy proffering without thinking for a moment.

  

Only six per cent of elementary education budget spent on children, points out survey

Aarti Dhar
Interventions aimed directly at children — providing free textbooks, uniforms and addressing out of school children – account only for 6 per cent of the total investment in elementary education. The largest investment — 78 per cent — of the education budget in India is invested in teachers and management costs while the next largest spending, to the tune of 14 per cent, is done on creating school infrastructure. Only 1 per cent is spent on improving the quality of education.
This has been shown by PAISA — a non-government group — in its analysis of elementary education funds of seven States for 2009-2010. The study covered the districts of Medak (Andhra Pradesh), Nalanda and Purnea (Bihar), Kangra (Himachal Pradesh), Sagar (Madhya Pradesh), Satara (Maharashtra), Jaipur and Udaipur (Rajasthan) and Jalpaiguri (West Bengal).
The focus of the study was to track the flow of funds from their point of origin to their final point of expenditure: the district or the school. This required analysis at the levels of the Centre and the State, district and school.
The survey says that substantial finances were provided to expand the elementary schooling system. Between 2007-08 and 2009-10, the elementary education budget increased from Rs. 68,710 crore to Rs. 97,255 crore. To put this investment in perspective, in 2008-09, the government invested Rs. 6,314 a child. However, the per child investment in each of these States for 2009-10 ranged from Rs. 3,982 in West Bengal to Rs. 19,111 in Himachal Pradesh indicating a vast inter-State disparity in investments.
Inter-State patterns of investment reveal interesting variations. Bihar stands out for investing just over half its budget (59 per cent) on teachers, followed by Madhya Pradesh and West Bengal, which invested 64 per cent and 67 per cent respectively. One reason for this low investment is a policy in all three States to substitute regular teachers for contract teachers. Bihar and West Bengal invest the largest proportion of their resources in programmes directed at children.
While funds for infrastructure development are often channelled to schools; the key decisions related to sanctions and procurement are taken by the district administration. Importantly, while a school can demand infrastructure funds, it has no decision-making power as most major infrastructure-related expenditures are incurred based on directives received from the district and State administration.
An analysis of the flow of funds from the Centre to the district or schools revealed that there was need for a serious reassessment of the current model of financing and decision-making in elementary education to enable India to make the shift from schooling to learning.
Increased centralisation
With the implementation of the Right to Education Act, funds to elementary education have seen a significant increase. However, this increase was accompanied by an increased centralisation of decision-making — the antithesis of a decentralised approach. “This centralisation is further exacerbated by the governance deficit in actual expenditure management,” a provisional report of PAISA District Studies (rural), 2011 said.
The survey was jointly done by Accountability Initiative and Centre for Policy Research.
The survey points to serious delays and gaps in fund flows across all levels of government. “These delays have a knock-on effect on expenditures, resulting in the prioritisation of recurring expenditures like salaries, at the expense of other key learning-related activities like training and quality. These problems are compounded by the fact that little time and fact was spent in developing the capacities of school and local officials to exercise discretion whereever necessary.
It advocates for greater transparency and efficient fund flow management, which was critical to ensure that the recommended move away from the current system of tied time-lined budgets to a system that focuses on children and school, works.

·  78 p.c. of budget spent on teachers while 14 p.c. is spent on school infrastructure
·  West Bengal showed highest per child investment at Rs. 3,982 in 2009-10
http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/article2789083.ece

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