The Delhi government in its annual Budget on Monday earmarked about 23 per cent of the total plan outlay expenditure, amounting to Rs 10,690 crore, for the education sector for the next fiscal year, the highest among all sectors under plan. The total amount earmarked for the sector this year is 8.68 per cent more than last year’s Rs 9,836 crore.
Deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia, explaining the AAP government’s “three-fold approach” towards education, said, “Our government constructed 21 new buildings for government schools last year and is constructing 8,000 new classrooms, which are equivalent to the infrastructure of 200 schools. If these schools function in double shifts, then they will be equivalent to 400 schools.” Mr Sisodia added that he had inspected nearly 100 government schools this year and ensured cleanliness, separate toilets for girls and availability of clean drinking water.
Mr Sisodia, who also holds the education portfolio, said, “There has been an appointment of an estate manager in every government school to provide daily reports of school maintenance to deputy director, who would further take cognisance of the report, initiate required action and send a report to the Directorate of Education and the minister.” He added that Rs 100 crore has been allocated for installing CCTV cameras in all the schools.
Targeting the Central government, Mr Sisodia said that the AAP government had increased its education budget every year, whereas the Central government, irrespective of the political party in power, decreases the percentage of budget allocation for education every year.
The AAP government, he said, has set a goal to make government schools better than private school in next three years. The main focus of the AAP for this year will be on training and capacity building of teachers and principals by renowned institutes across the world for which a sum of Rs 102 crore has been proposed as against Rs 9.4 crore last year.
“A sum of Rs 48 crore has been proposed for upgrading sports infrastructure by setting up sports schools and sports university in Delhi. For providing vocational skill education in schools, an amount of Rs 152 crore has been allocated by the government,” said Mr Sisodia.
The Delhi government has allocated Rs 50 crore to commence vocational courses in more than 100 smart career colleges and to expand the opportunities of undergraduate and postgraduate education, construction of new campuses of Ambedkar University of Delhi would commence at Karampura followed by starting of evening shifts in three DU colleges. Even the second phase of IIT is on fastrack and final assistance of incubation centres has also been given, he added.
