Education Budget 2023: Academics expect focus on social-emotional learning, digitisation of education

NEW DELHI: 2023-24 Budget will be presented by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on February 1, 2023. The education sector has high hopes from the upcoming budget. In the union budget 2023, academics want the government to spend on digitisation of education and skill development, upskilling government school teachers and spending more on government schools in rural and urban areas.

In the forthcoming budget, we hope to see lot more focus on providing relevant infrastructure to support learning and learning recovery, particularly in low-resource schools, Ratna Viswanathan, CEO, Reach to Teach said: “The budget should focus on achieving the target set by NEP 2020 of universal achievement of Early Childhood Education and FLN skills by 2025.”

There should be budget outlays for building/co-locating Bal Vatikas in Government Schools, and recruiting and training anganwadi workers for Early Childhood Education needs, Ms Viswanathan added.

Allocations are required for physical infrastructure and supporting software to create live digital dashboards at the state education department level and provide resources for the integration of the school student’s database with the Civil Registration System (CRS) and e-Mamta Database to ensure accurate identification of all eligible children for enrolment through a unique ID for each child, to improve enrolment, attendance and transition, she added.

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Anticipating that this year’s budget will give attention to offline education and ensure that knowledge and information is accessible to all, Kavita Sahay Kerawalla, Vice-Chairperson, VIBGYOR Group of Schools said: “We are looking forward to the Union Budget this year with a strong focus on the digitisation of education and skill development in line with the implementation of NEP.”

“Last year, the budgetary allocation to education sector was increased by 11.86%, making it the sector's biggest budget allocation to date. As the industry gets ready for a rebound, the industry is eagerly looking forward to this budget. We anticipate that this year's attention will be on offline education, ensuring that knowledge and information are accessible and affordable for all. Therefore, any budgetary or funding allocation that encourages vocation and skill development, teachers training and infrastructure upgrade will enable schools to provide high-quality, personalised learning and an emphasis on outcome evaluation," she added.

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Saying that the education sector hopes for a budget that recognizes the importance of education technology and skill development and takes steps to support its development and adoption, Jai Decosta, Founder and CEO, K12 Techno Services said: “We anticipate that taxes on educational programmes will be reduced significantly from the current 18% tax. This will ease the burden of millions of learners seeking a better future through skilling and upskilling programmes, thereby influencing employability and employment.”

The education budget for Education and Children need deeper thoughts and a shift in our priorities, Dr Anuradha Sridhar, Head of Curriculum Development and Training, Aditya Birla Education Academy said, adding that: “With less than a decade for us to fulfill the mandates of the United Nations Sustainable Development goals, the education budget for Education and Children need deeper thoughts and a shift in our priorities.”

“I wish the government increases their budgets for teacher upskilling for the government sector school teachers in a very structured way to improve student learning outcomes in classrooms and train them on the NEP 2020,” she added.

“If more revenue is allocated to government schools in rural and urban India on improving the Social emotional learning of students and teachers and structured wellness programs are created with expert interventions,” Dr Sridhar added.