Education: Budget 2021 has allocated INR 93,224 crore towards education for 2021-22. Of this, INR 38,350 crore has been allocated for higher education, and INR 54,874 crore for school education. The total allocation is around INR 6,087 crores less than the budget estimate for 2020-21.
More importantly, no funds have been allocated separately for the National Education Policy (NEP). Experts see this as particularly discouraging especially since the government had committed to begin implementation of the NEP this year.
At a time when the sector is reeling from massive disruption due to the lockdown and children are unable to attend physical school, allocating funds to the NEP would have helped improve infrastructure and enable digitisation. The NEP rollout requires an investment of around INR 1.14 trillion for a five-year period.
Read this analysis of nine key chapters from the National Education Policy (NEP), 2020 from a practitioner’s perspective.