The Teacher Training Funding, this year, witnessed 87% decline. Over the last six years, it has gone from ₹1,158 crore to ₹150 crore. It proves that by each year the priority for allocation of funds towards teachers training is declining.
This year, the School Education observed a 3% decline in the funding allocation as compared to the budget allocated for the same in 2013, whereas the higher education witnessed a 28% increase in budget allocation over the past six years.
The Education Department is observed to be the largest in revenue expenditure and the budget allocated for the same includes payment of salaries of the elementary and secondary education teachers.
In order to improve the situation, the central government made changes to the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, which aims at providing education to children aged between 6-14 years, they combined the Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA), which combined secondary education and teacher training and introduced a new scheme combining both schemes namely Samagra Shiksha (holistic education) in April 2018.
This needs to be notified that the funding for the education department is originated from the educational cess, which means taxes, instead of the budget allocation. The Cesses include direct and indirect taxes, service tax, GST; it basically means a tax on a tax calculated as percentage tax.
For the first time when the education tax was imposed was in 2004-05 and now the changes include, the education cess being included in corporation tax, income tax, and customs. A new form of cess was introduced when education and higher-education cess was combined with health and education cess from 2018-19, imposed at 4%.
The Central government also introduced social welfare surcharge of 10%, out of which 30% is considered to be meant for education, the collection of cess from the social welfare surcharge is meant for financing education, health and social security.
The Expenditure towards education department has been declining since 2015-16 indicating that the proposed budget is lower than even the anticipated cess collections. This also indicates that the no revenue is observed to be reserved for strengthening education.
The Highest number of accrued taxes with the government includes the education cess, which puts the government in a difficult position for providing funding to improve education crisis in the country.
Looking at the depleting situation of the education department, soon the country will frame different policies to reconstruct the education department and improve the situation in the best way possible.