Education gets biggest share of Delhi Budget pie once again; allocation bumped up this year

New Delhi: The biggest share of the Delhi budget was allotted to the education sector once again, an area that the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government in the Capital has made its highest priority since the party presented its first budget in 2015.

Presenting an increased budgetary allocation for the Capital in 2021-22 in the Delhi Budget, state finance minister Manish Sisodia said the state government will work on a virtual model school to expand the reach of Delhi’s education model, start a teachers’ training university, and aim for 100 schools of excellence in the national capital.

The government earmarked ₹16,377 crore for the education sector, up from ₹15,815 crore last year. Referring to the establishment of a new state education board that chief minister Arvind Kejriwal announced last week and a new syllabus for nursery till Class 8, Sisodia said the state will focus on preparing “patriots who take responsibilities for the country”, enabling job creation, and moulding “better human beings”.

“During the pandemic, our teachers and students had to switch to online learning. Our educators, who did not know how to use a smartphone, took help from children and younger teachers to teach online without any formal training for nearly a year. Our teachers learned to use technology in imparting education and we plan to adopt it for the future,” Sisodia said in the state assembly on Tuesday.

Notably, the AAP government has increased the budget allocation for the education and health sectors in the Capital every year since it presented its first budget for the 2015-16 fiscal. In its second budget, the AAP more than doubled the allocation for education, which leapt from ₹4,570 crore to ₹10,689 crore in 2016-17.

The deputy chief minister said the government will start a “virtual model school” to open up the Delhi education model for people across the country. “There will be no walls or building but there will be studies, children, teachers, enrolment, and examinations. This will be a unique effort and this school may be the first of its kind in the world. We have started work on the design and will try to start it by next year. Any child in the country who wants to study under the Delhi model of education can make use of this,” the education minister said.

This year, the government proposed doubling seed funding — distributed in Delhi government schools as part of the Entrepreneurship Mindset Curriculum — for students of classes 11 and 12 to ₹2,000.

The government has proposed to increase the intake of students by around 8,500 in the higher education sector by expanding the campuses of two state universities — Guru Gobind Singh IP University and Ambedkar University.

Sisodia also proposed a university to train teachers in line with the new National Education Policy (NEP), a move experts welcomed.

Aejaz Masih, dean of the education faculty at Jamia Millia Islamia, said, “Ideal teacher training is possible only when there is integration between subject knowledge and pedagogical knowledge [for a particular discipline]. This is perhaps not possible if we set up an institute in isolation. So, it is a good initiative if we conceptualise a full-fledged teacher training institute. But NEP calls for the multidisciplinary institution of higher education instead of standalone educational institutes. This contradiction needs to be sorted out before establishing the institute.”

The deputy chief minister also called for modification in Delhi School Education Act, 1973 and Delhi University Act, 1922. “These Acts are in contradiction of NEP. To implement the NEP, we need to change these two old Acts. We have started working on a new law and have requested the Centre to revise provisions of DU Act,” he said.