Education allocation drops even as school enrolments go up

SLUG: BMC BUDGET

Mumbai: The BMC has reduced its allocation towards education from ₹3,370 crore last year to ₹3,347 crore in its budget for 2023–24. The share of the education pie in the overall BMC budget has also been reduced significantly, from 7.33 percent to 6.36 percent, even though the number of students in BMC schools has increased by 26,000. The budget for the civic body’s education department was presented on Saturday by additional municipal commissioner Ashwini Bhide to commissioner Iqbal Singh Chahal.

For the first time since venturing into non-state board education in 2020–21, the BMC paid ₹4.44 lakh as “candidacy program fees” for obtaining affiliation to the International Baccalaureate (IB) board. The BMC is the first civic body in the country to offer education under various boards. The brainchild of Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Aaditya Thackeray, the Mumbai Public School (MPS) system provides affiliation to CBSE (11 schools), ICSE, IB, and the Cambridge Board of Education.

Sainath Durge, a former education committee member of the BMC, while commenting on the budget, remarked that earlier it had been proposed that the civic body would add 10 schools to the CBSE stream or that of another education board every year. “However, this year’s budget doesn’t have a single word on it,” he said. “Also, following the transformation of BMC schools into MPS, the number of admissions across all education boards and language mediums has increased, and the total number of students has gone up by 26,000 in the academic year 2022-23. The decrease in the share in education this year will affect the civic body’s spending on each student.”

This year, the BMC intends to build 25 well-equipped sports centres like the 10 that it established last year. Nitin Dalvi, an education activist, however, criticised the budget allocation for sports. “ ₹50 lakh is peanuts compared to the overall budget,” he said. “The BMC lacks the vision to encourage budding talent and development of sporting facilities for BMC schoolchildren. While the increase in the number of students in BMC schools is a good sign, it’s disappointing that the budget for education is a mere 6.36 percent of the overall outlay.”

Deputy municipal commissioner Bhide maintained that the budget was basically children-centric and focusing on the overall development of students. “Measures have been taken to make primary and quality education more accessible as well as measures towards the safety, health and hygiene of students,” she said. “Also, emphasis has been placed on entrepreneurship and vocational skills for secondary students.”

BOX 1

HEAD: Skill education to be introduced

In a first, the budget has made an allocation of ₹28.45 crore towards skill education. According to the BMC, the initiative is in line with the National Education Policy’s objective of making students self-reliant through skill education—for which purpose, the BMC last year signed an agreement with various state government departments and bodies. From the coming academic year, the BMC has decided to provide skill development training to school students in various sectors such as electronics, hotel management, apparel, fashion designing, food service, health and hygiene, automobile, tourism and hospitality.

Box 2

HEAD: Science centres for 88 primary schools

The budget proposes the establishment of maths and science centres on a pilot basis in 88 BMC primary schools. With education reports highlighting that BMC students are weak in maths and science, the objective of these centres is to enhance the quality of teaching in these areas as well as to encourage students to develop observation, concentration and comprehension skills and develop a scientific approach. The science centres will include small-format games to explain concepts like Newton’s disk, centrifugal force, electric current, geometric figures and so on.