Education Budget 2025 Highlights: Samagra Shiksha, PM SHRI see outlays rise while JNVs face cuts

NEW DELHI: The outlay for school education in the union budget 2025-26 has increased by 7.62%, while the share of schools has risen marginally, from 1.53% to 1.55%, in the overall spending estimates for the next fiscal year.

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The budget document, presented by the union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman in the parliament on Saturday, has Rs 78,572 crore earmarked for the department of school education and literacy under the ministry of education, Rs 5,564 crore more than Rs 73,008 crore provided for the current financial year 2024-25. The allocation exceeds this year’s revised estimate of Rs 67,571 crore by almost Rs 11,000 crore.

The bulk of the enhanced funding has gone to Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan, the central government’s overarching scheme to fund schools around the country. The planned expenditure on the programme went up from this year’s Rs 37,010 crore to Rs 41,250 crore - a rise of 11.46%.

The other big gainer is the Prime Minister’s Schools for Rising India (PM SHRI), a centrally-sponsored scheme launched in 2022 with an objective of developing thousands of government-run schools as 'exemplar' schools showcasing all components of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020.

The outlay for the programme has been consistently climbing, from Rs 1,800 crore in 2022-23, when it was called ‘Exemplar Schools’, to Rs 6,050 crore in 2023-24 and Rs 7,500 crore for the next financial year.

The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), which is responsible for preparing school curricula and textbooks, has also been provided an additional grant of Rs 84 crore. For the last three years, the organisation’s budgetary allocation has hovered around Rs 510 crore.

Union Education Budget 2025: Schemes, schools and allocations (BE in Rs. Crore)

Mid-day meal scheme funds cut in RE

The finance minister in her budget speech 2025 promised to enhance the cost norms for the nutritional support under the Poshan 2.0 programme for pre-school children in anganwadis.

However, outlay for the mid-day meal programme, the corresponding scheme for schoolgoing children under the Prime Minister Pradhan Mantri Poshan Shakti Nirman (PM POSHAN), saw only a marginal increase of Rs 33 crore over Rs 12,467 crore earmarked for this year.

More worryingly, the revised estimate for the scheme in 2024-25 has dropped to Rs 10,000 crore, while the actual expenditure in the previous year 2023-24 was only Rs 8,458 crore. By comparison, the centre had spent Rs 12,681 crore towards the flagship programme in 2022-23.

JNVs’ budget cut, KVs’ rises

The biggest budget cut was faced by the Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti, which runs Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas (JNVs) meant for socially and economically backward students in rural areas. The funding for these schools was slashed by Rs 495 crore from Rs 5,800 crore planned to be spent this year, bringing it closer to Rs 5,371 crore’s revised estimate.

On the other hand, the allocation for Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan, which operates Kendriya Vidyalas, was increased by around Rs 200 crore. However, at around 2%, this addition is relatively low compared to the overall improvement in the school budget.

There was little-to-no change in the funding for National Means cum Merit Scholarship, New India Literacy Programme as well as the World Bank-supported Strengthening Teaching-Learning and Results for States (STARS) initiative, which aims to improve quality of education in schools.

More Atal Tinkering Labs

Sitharaman, in her speech, also announced the setting up of 50,000 Atal Tinkering Labs in government schools in the next 5 years to ‘cultivate the spirit of curiosity and innovation, and foster a scientific temper’ among students. She also said broadband connectivity will be provided to all government secondary schools and primary health centres in rural areas under the Bharatnet project.

The government also proposed to implement a Bharatiya Bhasha Pustak Scheme to provide digital-form Indian language books for school and higher education, so that students could understand their subjects better.