Budget 2023: Tech-enabled teacher training, focus on mental well-being schemes, expect education groups

NEW DELHI: In union budget 2023, private education groups expect lower tax slab, spendings on quality education, focus on child education, and attention to mental well-being schemes. Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman will present the Union Budget 2023 on February 1.

Ashish Rajpal, founder of XSEED Education said, “Our three wishes for the budget would be - Implementation, Implementation, Implementation. Prioritization and allocation of resources towards implementation of the National Education Policy is critical. It's been widely agreed that it's a great document in principle, however, the country and children will only benefit when it is implemented on the ground. If XSEED was to pinpoint one main reason for its fantastic results - +31% same-student improvement in one year - it would be implementation.”

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Divya Jain, Co-founder at Seekho said, “Ed tech has seen course correction over this past year but has emerged stronger. Specially in higher education and employability it is the only solution and way forward. We look forward to a lower tax slab for education services to students in particular. Push to implement nep which will allow for the youth to learn digitally, work and still earn their degrees.”

Poshak Agrawal, Co-founder, Athena Education said, "The government should allocate at least 6% of the GDP to education. The spendings should be made on quality education, improved pedagogy, and experiential curriculum.”

Silpi Sahoo, Chairperson, SAI International Education Group expects impetus on the EdTech space, increase in budget allocation, reduction in GST, stronger connections between economic opportunity and education system, collaboration with foreign universities, focus on child education, and attention to mental well-being schemes.

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“We hope that the budget will have all the required financial and regulatory measures to improve the GER in higher education from a measly 27.4% to upwards of 40% over the next 10 years. One way to accomplish this is by ensuring more students should get access to degrees in their regional languages, which is a much-needed step introduced by the NEP and we hope that the government will further enhance this initiative’s implementation,” said Ruchir Arora, CEO and co-founder, CollegeDekho.

“The government has taken a lot of measures to bridge the educational access divide by allowing NIRF top 100 Universities to offer online degree programs which hold the same relevance as on-campus degrees. We believe this is a vital step to enhance access to high-quality professors for ambitious students across every corner of India and we expect this budget to further aid this initiative,” he added.