‘Maharashtra govt has not spent enough on education in last 3 years’

Maharashtra’s total budgetary spending on education has remained stagnant at 18 per cent over the past three years, reveals a study by NGO Child Rights and You (CRY)...

Maharashtra’s total budgetary spending on education has remained stagnant at 18 per cent over the past three years, reveals a study by Child Rights and You (CRY), a non-governmental organisation, on Monday. It shows that the state is not spending enough on teachers’ training and educating the marginalised population.

Maharashtra has fewer government schools despite increasing the spending by 32 per cent in elementary education and 43 per cent in secondary education. (Pic for Representation)

The state is spending more than Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. But the state’s spending on each child, Rs28,630, is less than that of the centrally-run Kendriya Vidyalayas — Rs32,263 a student.

The study conducted by the NGO’s Centre for Budgets, Governance and Accountability (CBGA), emphasises that the state is spending only 0.4% of its budget on training teachers.

It highlights that it is alarming that Maharashtra has fewer government schools despite increasing the spending by 32 per cent in elementary education and 43 per cent in secondary education.

“More investment is required for addressing existing gaps and meeting the desired outcome for RTE standards on infrastructure and quality of teaching and learning,” said Kreeanne Rabadi, Regional director (West) CRY.

While Maharashtra has a total of 24 per cent of children from socio-economically weaker sections (SC/ST) among its school-going population, the exclusive allocation on educational schemes for the marginalised population is merely 1.9% of the school education budget.