Lack of funding for education
India is a nation that has always been riddled with educational problems. There are a lot of reasons while India is lagging behind in educational pursuits. The majority of the population is poverty-stricken. The village living population counts for 72.2% of the population and the town living makes up for 27.8% of the population. Government schools that are set up in villages and small towns don’t provide quality education. The main reason behind this is the lack of funding they receive from the government. Even when they receive funding, it’s not properly utilized.
The teachers working in these government schools rarely receive their salaries on time. This makes them disappointed and unmotivated to teach. There are non-governmental schools in India that provide quality education, but they are too expensive for the poor.
In spite of being the second largest higher education network in the world, India has 30% of its population as illiterate.
According to section 7 of the Right to Education Act, the burden to implement the act falls on the government. However, the government often ignores this.
Statistics show that only 9.5% of the schools in India are providing free education to children between the ages of 6 and 14 as stated by the Right to Education act.
The government has launched schemes like Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and the Midday Meal Program to improve education in the country. However, they have not been very successful. Ambarish Rai, convenor of the RTE forum has stated his problems towards this. He thinks that neither the Prime Minister nor the HRD minister has shown their compliance with the Right to Education act. The situation looks very dismal now. The percentage of RTE — compliant schools is increasing at such a slow pace that it would take 87 years to achieve the goal.
India spends only 3.1% of its GDP on education. This is very low. India needs to spend at least 6% on the educational sector to see any solid improvement.
Provita Kundu who is a researcher at the Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability shares her ideas by saying that when it comes to Indian education almost all of the areas are underfunded.
Teachers working in government schools do not receive their salaries on time. State governments lack the funds to hire permanent teachers. Children in government schools remain oblivious to a lot of things going around in the country because their education is not up to the mark. Some even drop out of school to support their families.
Little to no money is spent on teacher training programs, which could help improve learning significantly. There aren’t enough resources to train the teachers. Thus, teachers shouldn’t be put to blame for the low-quality education.
Even though education is underfunded, states are not able to fully utilize their funds. One of the main reasons behind this is delayed payments to states by the central government.
Right now, the major problem for government schools is adapting to digital learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to a survey, only 28% of government schools had a computer and only 12% had an internet connection.
There are numerous problems that we have to deal with. Education is a basic human right. We need stricter rules and an increase in education funding from the government. Till then, we’ll keep taking small steps at the individual level to improve the situation.
-By Saman Jawaid, SDF Batch 14, Hansraj College, Delhi, India
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