While the Indian government has done much to safeguard the interests of all stakeholders of education, including students, the upcoming interim budget needs to address some important components of the education sector. Undoubtedly, lowering the GST rates from an existing 18 per cent to expected 5 per cent will make education affordable to students. The upcoming budget also needs to take initiatives such as allocating bigger spending on education, provision for proper teacher training along with higher pay and administrative incentives. Incentives need to be provided to encourage research in all disciplines and for augmenting the technical capacity of central educational institutions like NCERT, NUEPA, IGNOU and many more. Furthermore, a comprehensive scheme on the lines of Ayushman Bharat can be a great start to improve the quality of education.
It’s not so much of a budgetary problem. It’s more of an implementation problem. And that’s something that requires more granular attention. You can keep on raising the budget, but what is the point if you don’t improve the quality of the programmes? At least 5 per cent of the GDP should be allocated to education. You can’t really single out an area within the education sector, but I feel training of teachers is extremely crucial. Even the evaluation of teachers is critical. There should be a 360-degree evaluation in terms of what is being taught and what is being absorbed, instead of learning by rote. There is a critical link between the learner and the text, which is not happening.