New Delhi: As the Indian government prepares to unveil its budget for the upcoming fiscal year, one prominent education advocate is calling for a significant increase in allocation for education. Vineet Nayar, the founder and chairman of the Sampark Foundation, a leading NGO focused on transforming primary education through frugal innovation, has stated that the COVID-19 pandemic has had a devastating effect on learning levels in the country, with a significant drop in learning levels and an increase in enrolment in government schools.
Call for Action
Nayar believes that unless the government substantially increases allocation to education in the upcoming budget, this negative trend will continue. He argues that education is the foundation for the future of the country and that 30% increase in number of teachers and their capabilities to teach in the right way is necessary. “If we miss this opportunity we would have millions of children who will miss benefiting from the focus on foundational numeracy and literacy skills and next year will be too late,” Nayar said.
He acknowledges the challenge of balancing the budget is huge, but he hopes that the government sets the right priorities for the future of the children of this country. Nayar points out that not only is the allocation to education much lower than what it needs to be, a substantial part of that budget goes into teachers doing non-teaching activities.
Budget allocation not reaching classrooms
Therefore, what actually reaches the classroom is much lower than what is allocated in the budget. He hopes that this year’s budget will not only have a substantial increase in education budget to fulfill the FLN mission, but also draw a red line on using teaching time for non-academic activities, investing in frugal ideas instead of expensive technology solutions that are easy to buy but difficult to use and investment in increasing number of teachers at the cost of everything else because technology is not a replacement of teachers.
