Budget 2018: Here's a quick look into what happened in education sector last year

A day before the government announces its budget for the new year, we look back at last year's promises with regard to educational policies.

The Government assigned Rs 79,684.95 crore for the education sector for 2017-18 which was a 9.9 percent from the previous year. While Rs 46,356.25 has been allotted for the school sector and the rest has been allotted for higher education.

The Government last year was mainly focussed on bringing about innovation and therefore set up the Innovation Fund for secondary education to encourage local innovation including ICT enabled learning transformation and focus on 3479 educationally backward blocks. 

Following closely on the heels of initiatives like Coursera, the government also promised to launch 350 online courses through a medium called SWAYAM which were linked to DTH channels. The government had aslo proposed to launch the Skill Acquisition and Knowledge Awareness for Livelihood Promotion Programme or SANKALP which aimed to train 3.5 young people in the country, The programme was set to cost Rs 4000 crores.

There were plans to also extend the Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Kendras to 600 districts and establishment of 100 international skills centres which would conduct training in foreign languages for those looking to go abroad.

A National Testing Agency was also proposed to organise all major entrance exams and the government also said that well-performing institutions would have greater autonomy than they did in the past. It was also proposed that a revised framework would be devised for a new credit based system.

At a conference early this month, HRD Minister Prakash Javdekar had mentioned that a lot was to be expected from this year's budget, we'll just have to wait and see if what he said is true.