Mumbai: Criticising the approach of the government towards school and higher education, the educationists have said that the Centre should concentrate on strengthening and improving education at the grass-root level and in rural areas by allocating a larger portion of the entire budget for education.
Speaking about the expectations for school education, J.M. Abhyankar, a former chairman of the Maharashtra State Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education (MSBSHSE), Pune said, “School education is the responsibility of the Centre and state and Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan (SSA) is the vehicle to implement the Right To Education (RTE) Act. While the annual requirement of the state is Rs 3,200 crore to implement SSA, the centre allocates less than Rs 1000 crore for Maharashtra.”
He added, “As a result of which there is no improvement in manpower, infrastructure and quality of education. The allocation of funds for school education should be proportionate to the requirement, but it is not being done. We expect that the Centre to look at this aspect and corrects the shortcoming in the budget.”
Dr Rajan Welukar, former vice-chancellor of the University of Mumbai also stressed on the need for allocation of more funds for various developmental activities in higher education. “There is an urgent need for training of teaching community, creating state of the art infrastructure in rural areas, increasing connectivity and allotting funds for research. If funds are spent in these areas, there will be a sizeable impact and growth in the higher education sector over a period of time.”
He added, “However, the centre is allotting only two per cent of the entire budget for higher education hence we expect the centre to increase the allocation of funds in the budget,” said Dr Welukar.
