Indian Government’s National Education Budget 2022
by Deepika Baruah
18/02/2022
Higher Education Institutions, Further Education Institutions, Schools & Independent Colleges, ELT Providers, Agents/Advisors & School Counsellors
The Indian Union Budget for 2022-23 has been announced. Central government’s education budget is increased by 18 per cent over previous year, to around GBP 10 billion[1], with increases in both basic and higher education spending as well as funding for several key initiatives in the education sector including distance and online learning, critical thinking and vocational skills, and reforms to transnational education as part of the Gujarat International Finance Tec-City project.
The total budget encompassing all sectors’ annual spending plans including Education, which are to be funded by the central government in the new financial year 2022-23, is pegged at GBP 397 billion. The government is calling the new budget a blueprint for modern India@100, which sets out a roadmap for the coming 25 years focussing on targeted capital investment, digital, energy transition and technology-based development.
The economic growth is expected to continue to be strong, around 8 to 8.5 per cent in 2022-23, if there are no further debilitating pandemic disruptions, global supply disruptions ease over time and oil prices stay stable.
The rebound in growth is a result of the healthy economic recovery made in 2021-2022 which has helped to offset the contraction in economy caused due to the pandemic and has positioned India back to the same financial levels as it was before the pandemic started.
The education expenditure allocation includes spending plan of the central government only. Apart from this, state government and private sector have their own allocations for the year which they manage directly and are not included in these estimates. The national education budget, hence, provides a part picture but in some sense articulates priorities that will drive additional investments from the state governments on shared goals. The states under the federal system formulate their own state level budget which include allocations to part fund the centrally designed initiatives and also their own designed programmes specific to their state needs.
The national education budget is divided into two parts based on the two principal departments of the Ministry of Education – the Department of School Education and Literacy, and the Department of Higher Education. For 2022-23, the budget for school education spending is GBP 6 bn (INR 63,449 crore) and has increased by 22 per cent over its previous year’s revised allocation. The higher education budget has also increased by 13 per cent over its previous year’s allocation and is GBP 4 bn (INR 40,828 crore).
The education budget has been increasing over the years consistently and the trend during last four years can be observed for school education and higher education separately in the graph below.
This article will examine specific announcements made by the Indian Finance Minister in relation to the education sector during tabling of the budget as well as analysis of education budget sheets containing detailed data of approved/modified education programme/interventions.
Key announcements
Below is the table on announcements which included strengthening of digital learning and teaching, setting up a central Digital University, promoting critical thinking in vocational courses and opening up of the GIFT City to overseas education service providers.
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Announcements |
Analysis and opportunities |
The ‘one class-one TV channel’ programme of PM eVIDYA will be expanded from 12 to 200 TV channels in regional languages for classes 1-12.
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This will largely help students as they lost two years of formal education due to the pandemic, especially those in remote locations.Specialised content will need to be developed along with the delivery approach which enables these children to make up for the loss and are back at the require learning levels.
Development of English language content aligned to the national curriculum and capacity development of teachers to deliver and assess learning progress are likely to be the areas needing expert service providers. |
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There is potential for consultancy opportunities for capacity building of teachers in developing e-content and delivery. |
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Setting up virtual labs and using them for simulated learning in schools is a paradigm shift and likely to generate consultancy opportunities for making a blue print for operationalisation and support in specific areas such as content and monitoring of learning outcomes.This would be most helpful in areas where there is lack of access to good physical labs infrastructure. |
This will be made available in different Indian languages and ICT formats. The University will be built on a networked hub-spoke model, with the hub building cutting edge ICT expertise. The best public universities and institutions in the country will collaborate as a network of hub-spokes. |
This will be the first central university in a digital mode, and the third digital university in India.This will enhance access to higher education for students from economically poor, marginalised and rural backgrounds.The digital university could collaborate not only with best universities in India but also abroad to provide personalised anytime and anywhere education to students in India and across the globe going forward.
This opens space for the Edtech sector and international partnerships given the scale of access and provision to plug.More information on the plans of the government is awaited. |
World-class foreign universities and institutions will be allowed in the GIFT City to offer courses in Financial Management, FinTech, Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics free from domestic regulations, except those by IFSCA to facilitate availability of high-end human resources for financial services and technology.
An International Arbitration Centre will be set up in the GIFT City for timely settlement of disputes under international jurisprudence. 106. Services for global capital for sustainable & climate finance in the country will be facilitated in the GIFT City.
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This is aimed at building domestic capacity in areas of finance and technology by opening up to international quality institutions to physically set up and operate from the location in Gandhinagar, Gujarat. These institutions will be kept outside the purview of domestic education regulation such as from the UGC and AICTE and will likely to be allowed to make and repatriate profit. The International Financial Services Centres Authority (IFSCA) regulations will however be applicable which will need to examined.
Indian private education sector whilst welcomes the move but feels disadvantaged by not being given the same exemptions on regulations, revenue and tax as a service provider.
With the setting up of the international arbitration centre, it will strengthen dispute resolution mechanism at GIFT IFSC & enhance ease of doing business at GIFT City. This is an exciting area and would be a clear route for UK universities with requisite competence to consider.
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Analysis of education budget sheets
The big increase in the school education budget is mainly on account of raised allocation for the national education programme called the Samagra Shiksha mission which includes teacher training and adult education components. It is a World Bank supported International Development Assistance (IDA) loan programme. Increase is also seen for exemplar schools - Kendriya Vidyalayas and Navodaya Vidyalayas which as per the National Education policy will handhold and mentor other schools to strengthen and attain goals of the policy. There is no dedicated allocation made for a national scheme to incentivise girl child for secondary education as was done last year, but this may be due to possible integration of this component with the Samagra mission.
There is a new budget line with an allocation of GBP 60 million (INR 600 crore) for a new scheme called ASPIRE (Accelerating State Programme for Improving Results), which appears to be towards preparation for the next Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2022 round in which India has agreed to participate.
For the higher education, priorities that stand out in the budget on the basis of the size of allocation and increase/decrease in amounts compared to previous years are detailed below.
The scholarship for students for colleges and universities has marginally increased. This would largely support students from marginalised communities.
Digital India E-learning allocation has increased overall in line with the budget’s focus on digital in the education sector. The National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology (ICT) allocation of GBP 40 million (INR 400 crore) is five times more than the previous year. This programme aims to leverage the potential of ICT in teaching and learning process for the benefit of all the learners in Higher Education Institutions in any time anywhere mode. This is an ongoing programme and seeks to increase gross enrolment in higher education.
The Research & Innovation budget has increased 51 per cent over last year with budget of GBP 21.8 million. The Scheme for Promotion of Academic and Research Collaboration (SPARC) which has been one of the funding sources for the Indian government to fund the UK-India Education Research Initiative programme gets a seven time increase from GBP 1 million (INR 10 crore) to GBP 7.4 million (INR 74 crore).
The Global Initiative of Academic Networks (GIAN) which is one of the platforms for forging international partnerships with scientists and entrepreneurs to elevate India's scientific and technological capacity to global excellence has doubled from its last year’s allocation. The internationalisation of higher education budget to transform India into a global knowledge hub is increased to GBP 20 million (INR 200 crore), which is an increase of 25 per cent.
It is worth noting that grants to Central Universities and Institutions of Eminence and the Institutions of Importance have increased. These institutions are quite active in exploring and setting up academic and research partnerships with international higher education institutions.
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2021-22 (GBP) |
2022-23 (GBP) |
%age increase |
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Central University |
883 million |
942 million |
+6.6% |
|
Indian Institute of Technology (IITs) |
834 million |
849 million |
+1.7% |
|
Indian Institute of Science, Education and Research (IISER) |
112 million |
137 million |
+22.3% |
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Indian Institute of Science (IISc) |
62 million |
72 million |
+16% |
Multidisciplinary Education and Research Improvement in Technical Education (MERITE) is a new scheme which will start from this year with external borrowing from the World Bank under IDA. This replaces an earlier project of the World Bank called the Technical Education Quality Improvement Programme which ran for nearly 19 years. MERITE will be implemented across India in about 350 government/government aided engineering institutions and affiliated technical universities. It has a modest allocation of GBP 2 million in its first year.
Apart from this, the proposal to roll out e-passports from 2022-23 will support a large section of students aspiring to study abroad. The number of Indian students studying abroad is expected to reach 1.8 million by 2024. It will however remain to be seen how long the response time will be to process request for a digitised passport.
Author: Sandeepa Sahay, Coordinator, South Asia Region Insight Hub
[1] Using exchange rate 1GBP=100 INR
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