Union Budget 2023-24 for Education - Teachers’ Training, Nursing Colleges & National Digital Library Proposed

07 February, 2023

Education forms a solid foundation for the sustainable and robust development of individuals and society at large. Quality education plays a significant and direct role in fostering the development of a country and making it a knowledge society. A nation’s annual budget is one of the significant indicators to assess its aspiration, strength, and path it is taking. The annual spending on education echoes a country’s commitment to enhancing the knowledge and skills of children and youth. This article tries to explore the Union Budget for 2023-24 and intends to highlight the proposals of the Government for the inclusive development of education led by Shri Dharmendra Pradhan, Hon’ble Minister of Education.

Hon’ble Finance Minister Smt Nirmala Sitharaman has adopted seven priorities for the budget 2023-24 and said, “they complement each other and act as the ‘Saptarishi’ guiding us through the Amrit Kaal”. Most of the allocation to education was classified under the priorities “Inclusive Development, Reaching the Last Mile and Unleashing the Potential”.

Allocation for education

The Union Budget 2023 presented by the Hon’ble Finance Minister on 1^st February, set aside INR 1.12 lakh crore (INR 1,12,899.47) for education – the highest ever and an increase of around 8.2% than what was proposed in 2022-23 (INR 1.04 lakh crore). Accordingly, of the total outlay, ?68,804.85 crore (an increase of 8%) has been allocated to the Department of School Education and Literacy and ?44,094.62 crore (an increase of 7.9% ) to the Department of Higher Education for the FY 2023-24. As a share of the total Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the budgetary allocation for education stands at 2.9%; the point to note here is, NEP 2020 calls for public investment in education to be 6 % of the GDP. However, education is not a central subject alone; states also have a role to play in the total education spending of the country.

Highlights of the education budget

Nursing Colleges: 157 new nursing colleges will be established in co-location with the existing 157 medical colleges established since 2014.

Teachers’ training: Teachers’ training will be re-envisioned through innovative pedagogy, curriculum transaction, continuous professional development, dipstick surveys, and ICT (Information and Communications Technology) implementation. The District Institutes of Education and Training will be developed as vibrant institutes of excellence for this purpose.

Medical Research: Facilities in select ICMR (Indian Council of Medical Research) Labs will be made available for research by public and private medical college faculty and private sector R&D teams for encouraging collaborative research and innovation.

Multidisciplinary courses for medical devices: Dedicated multidisciplinary courses for medical devices will be supported in existing institutions to ensure the availability of skilled manpower for futuristic medical technologies, high-end manufacturing and research.

National Digital Library for Children and Adolescents: A National Digital Library for children and adolescents will be set up for facilitating the availability of quality books across geographies, languages, genres and levels, and device-agnostic accessibility. States will be encouraged to set up physical libraries for them at panchayat and ward levels and provide infrastructure for accessing the National Digital Library resources.

Additionally, to build a culture of reading, and to make up for pandemic-time learning loss, the National Book Trust, Children’s Book Trust and other sources will be encouraged to provide and replenish non-curricular titles in regional languages and English to these physical libraries. Collaboration with NGOs that work in literacy will also be a part of this initiative. To inculcate financial literacy, financial sector regulators and organisations will be encouraged to provide age-appropriate reading material to these libraries.

Eklavya Model Residential Schools: In the next three years, the centre will recruit 38,800 teachers and support staff for the 740 Eklavya Model Residential Schools, serving 3.5 lakh tribal students.

Centres of Excellence for Artificial Intelligence: To realise the vision of “Make AI in India and Make AI work for India”, three centres of excellence for Artificial Intelligence will be set up in top educational institutions. Leading industry players will partner in conducting interdisciplinary research and developing cutting-edge applications and scalable problem solutions in the areas of agriculture, health, and sustainable cities. This will galvanize an effective AI ecosystem and nurture quality human resources in the field.

National Data Governance Policy: To unleash innovation and research by start-ups and academia, a National Data Governance Policy will be brought out. This will enable access to anonymised data.

Though this year’s education budget would have offered more allocation to higher education and proposed more plans to better ed tech environment, digital infrastructure, upskilling, research, scholarships, mental health support etc., one should understand running a country is not merely investing in education but to balance between needs like military spending and health facilities, priorities like encouraging digital transactions and aspirations like becoming multi-trillion dollar economy. Increasing the accessibility to quality education, especially to higher education must be the priority of any Government and mass programmes on scholarships, rural schooling, labs etc will push the country towards sustainable development in the medium to long run.

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