Delhi Budget: Education again gets pride of place in allocations

Describing a plan to distribute tablets in schools in 2018 as a grand success, Gahlot said the government will now provide new tablets to teachers, principals, vice-principals, and directorate of distance education (DDEs) in 2023-24, with 20 new computers to be installed in each of the 350 Delhi government school.

The Delhi government on Wednesday announced a budget allocation of ₹16,575 crore for education for the financial year 2023-24, the highest for any sector yet again and marginally higher than last year’s allocation of ₹16,278 crore. This was also the highest allocation for education in any Delhi Budget so far, eclipsing the ₹16,377 crore set aside for it in the 2021 budget estimates (BE).

Presenting his first budget, finance minister Kailash Gahlot announced that the government will almost double the number of D Ambedkar Schools of Specialised Education (SoSE) from 20 in 2021 to 37 in the coming year. (HT Photo)

In terms of percentage share, education accounts for 21% of the total allocation of the Budget 2023-24.

Presenting his first budget, finance minister Kailash Gahlot announced that the government will almost double the number of D Ambedkar Schools of Specialised Education (SoSE) from 20 in 2021 to 37 in the coming year. He added that foreign languages such as French, German, Japanese and Spanish will be taught at these SoSEs in a pilot project that will gradually be expanded to other schools over the next few years.

“Dr. Ambedkar Schools of Specialised Excellence started with 20 schools in 2021. We will now increase it to 37 in the coming year and around 10,000 children will be able to study in them,” Gahlot said in his speech, adding that these schools will be affiliated by the Delhi Board of School Education.

“We are also teaching French, German, Japanese and Spanish languages to the children in these schools. Based on the learnings from this pilot project, we will consider rolling it out to all schools in the coming years.” he said.

Describing a plan to distribute tablets in schools in 2018 as a grand success, Gahlot said the government will now provide new tablets to teachers, principals, vice-principals, and directorate of distance education (DDEs) in 2023-24, with 20 new computers to be installed in each of the 350 Delhi government schools.

Gahlot said that, for the first time, schools and industry will collaborate for 12 new Schools of Applied Learning to be built in Delhi. “The Kejriwal government has commenced 12 new Schools of Applied Learning to build a better future for our children. These schools will not only have traditional subjects but will also have a professional industrial setup to provide adequate exposure to the students to develop their skills.” he said.

To be sure, some of these schemes had been announced by the government in previous months.

The finance minister said the government was working on the idea of a “school complex”, as suggested in the National Education Policy, 2020, under which all anganwadis and feeder schools in an area will be supervised by the Delhi government in order to make the transition of children from these to government schools smoother.

“We all know that Municipal Corporation of Delhi schools are feeder schools of Delhi government, and every year around 180,000 children from these schools take admission in six class in Delhi government schools. In 2016, we found that 76% of Class 6 children could not even read their textbooks. Through the ‘Chunauti‘ and ‘Mission Buniyaad‘ programmes of the Delhi government, we tried to enhance reading, writing and basic arithmetic abilities, and this cycle goes on every year. Through the school complex idea, we will take all feeder schools and anganwadis in the area under us, so that the foundational skills of children can be improved before Class 6,” Gahlot said in his 2 hour, 27 minutespeech.

Highlighting the government’s achievements in the education sector, Gahlot said 98% of students in Class 12 in government schools passed this time. Of these, 493 children could qualify in JEE Mains and 648 in NEET. He also said 56 students from the first batch of the government’s “Entrepreneurial Mindset Curriculum” were able to get direct admissions in the top seven universities of Delhi.

In addition, he said 493 government school children could qualify in JEE Mains and 648 in NEET. Out of the around 0.9 million children that appeared for JEE Mains last year, only around 0.25 million could qualify for JEE advanced. Around 1.7 million students appeared for NEET, out of which around 0.9 million qualified.

He also said 56 students from the first batch of the government’s “Entrepreneurial Mindset Curriculum” were able to get direct admissions in the top seven universities of Delhi.

Gahlot said that in 2022-23 the government made the first residential Armed Forces Preparatory School operational in Delhi, where 160 students are currently studying and will soon join the armed forces. Classes in first batch of the Delhi Model Virtual School -- a virtual school with students from 14 states -- were also started in August 2022, he said.

On staffing in schools, Gahlot said, since 2015, the Delhi government appointed 24,144 teachers through direct recruitment and that some teachers and principals were also being sent overseas for training.

“We have sent 98 principals to IIM Ahmedabad for training this year, while 56 of our principals and teacher educators went to Cambridge for leadership training. If political narrow-mindedness had not come in the way, 60 primary teachers in-charge would have also been trained in Finland’s world-class early childhood and primary schooling model.” Gahlot said in his speech, announcing that so far 1,410 principals, teachers and teacher educators have received training in Finland, Singapore and Cambridge.

The Delhi government and lieutenant governor VK Saxena had been at loggerheads for several months over the issue of sending Delhi government school teachers to Finland to training. The Delhi government had said the LG had asked the government on a ‘cost-benefit’ analysis for this and had sent the government’s files back multiple times with queries on the issue. The proposal was eventually approved earlier this month.

Delhi BJP spokesperson Praveen Shankar Kapoor said while the increased budgetary allocation on the education front was always welcome, this needed to be used to improve education-related infrastructure in Delhi.

“Unfortunately, every year the Kejriwal government makes big budgetary allocations for education but every year a large portion of this budget gets lapsed. If the government is committed to the education sector, then why does this happen?” he said.