Hard lesson: funds not enough to attract teachers to government schools

Hard lesson: funds not enough to attract teachers to government schools

News:

Increased budget of state government for school education has failed to attract permanent qualified teaching staff.

Important Facts:

• Report prepared by Child Rights and You (CRY) and Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability discusses the relevance and challenges of outcome-based budgeting for Centrally Sponsored Schemes in school education
• The report examines budgeting for school education in six States — West Bengal, Chhattisgarh, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Maharashtra — during the 14th Finance Commission recommendation period.
• According to the study, State governments have increased their budgets for school education in the past three years, but the allotment of funds has not been enough to attract permanent qualified teaching staff to government schools.
• After the 14th FC recommendations and rationalization of Centrally Sponsored Schemes (CSS) by the Union Government, the Financing of CSS in school education has become largely dependent on how states priorities their budgetary resources.

Finding of the reports:

• The study finds that there has been an overall increase in revenue with the States following the 14th Finance Commission recommendations
• Study highlights issues of adequacy, implications for quality of school education and priorities for inclusion in budgeting for school education. It also poses some questions pertaining to effectiveness of the process of fund utilization by reviewing outcome budgets of education departments at the union and state level
  • Between 2015-16 and 2017-18, there was a net decline in the share of school education budget in the total State Budget for three of the six States.
• The report also examines whether the increase in the size of school education budget was more than the rise in size of the total budget, indicating a higher priority for the sector
  • It concluded that between 2014-15 and 2017-18, Uttar Pradesh saw a 98.8% increase in budget for schools, whereas its total budget increased by 63.3%
• All the six States showed an increase in the magnitude of per-child and per-student spending for education between 2014-15 and 2016-17
• A common feature of the Indian education system is the shortage of professionally qualified teachers, both at the elementary and secondary level
  • More than one lakh schools in India are run with only one teacher and all the six States surveyed have shown the number of such schools on the rise.
  • The analysis of six states reaffirms that after eight years of the Right to Education (RTE) Act implementation, states still suffer from acute teacher shortage.
• The problem is severe with regard to subject teachers at the upper primary level and secondary level.
• Across states, there are gaps with regard to school buildings, classrooms, repair work in classrooms and other physical infrastructure like drinking water, separate toilets for girls, playgrounds etc.

Outcome Based Budgeting:

• The building blocks of the outcome budgeting process are
  • Defining intermediate and final outcomes specifically in measurable and monitorable terms
  • Specification of standards/quality of outcomes
  • Costing of programmes
  • Capacity building for required efficiency in terms of skilled, human resources, institutional apparatus and technology
  • Adequate flow of funds at the appropriate time to the appropriate level and
  • A monitoring and evaluation system.
• Each of these key pillars is still evolving in India.

Conclusion and Policy Suggestions

• Comprehensive need-based planning, budgeting, and monitoring are required for ensuring inclusive education with quality.
• Community mobilization and active participation of community members in school education is critical, not only for effective planning and implementation of interventions in schools, but also for effective monitoring and ownership of government programmes by the community
• Given the accumulated deficit of resources across various components of education, such as infrastructure, teacher and nonteaching staff, training and monitoring, both the Union Government and state governments need to substantially step up and sustain investments on education for a longer period.
• It is also necessary to change the approach of government departments for more result-oriented planning, minimizing project-delays.