PVPF 2024

1.12 Lakh Crore Allocated to Education in Union Budget 2023

The primary demand for the Education Budget 2023 is for a larger overall budget allocation per the NEP 2020 objectives to make the education budget at least 6% of the entire GDP.
on Feb 01, 2023

Today, Nirmala Sitharaman, the union's finance minister, unveiled her fifth budget. Union Budget 2023 was also paperless, the same as the previous two years. Members of Parliament (MPs) and the general public can view it via the "Union Budget Mobile App."

This year, the ministry of education gave Rs 1.12 lakh crore instead of Rs 1.04 lakh crore. The budgetary allotment for education is at its greatest level ever. The Department of Higher Education has been given Rs 44,094 crore, while the Department of School Education will receive Rs 68,804 crore.

Expectations of Union Budget 2023

The public anticipates fewer taxes, funding for employment-creating programs, an increase in manufacturing, money remaining in the hands of the average person, and an increase in tax revenue.

The primary demand for the Education Budget 2023 is for a larger overall budget allocation per the NEP 2020 objectives to make the education budget at least 6% of the entire GDP. At the moment, it accounts for around 3% of the GDP.

The main requests from experts include tax breaks for edtech businesses and educational products, a significant expansion of the digital infrastructure to provide wider access to online learning resources, and significant measures to promote skill upskilling and growth.

Other expectations from education stakeholders are higher funds allocation for teacher training and support, higher education to boost GER, research and innovation, scholarships and schemes to support underprivileged students, world-class education and internationalization, and mental health support in educational institutions.

Union Budget 2023: Education Budget Highlights

Agri-Startups: The finance minister announced the creation of an agriculture accelerator fund to support the launching of agri-startups by young entrepreneurs, particularly in rural regions.

New Nursing Colleges: Along with the 157 medical colleges approved in 2014, 157 new nursing colleges will be established in central India.

National Digital Library for Children and Adolescents: The government has chosen to establish a national digital library for children and adolescents, making good on a significant pledge to strengthen digital infrastructure. This will make high-quality books more accessible in more places, languages, and devices.

Providing children with the necessary infrastructure to access the National Digital Library contents, physical libraries will also be pushed to be established in the states at the Panchayat level.

Regional Language Promotion: The National Book Trust, the Children's Book Trust, and other government publishers would be urged to provide books in regional languages in addition to English to the physical libraries that would be established in the states, in keeping with the NEP 2020 objectives.

This action is being taken to address the significant learning loss brought on by the Covid-19 epidemic and lockdown.

Recruitment of Teachers for Tribal Schools: To improve education for tribal students, the government would hire 38,800 instructors to work in the 3.5 lakh tribal students' 748 modern residential schools during the next three years.

Multidisciplinary Course for Medical Devices: The government intends to launch a multidisciplinary course for medical devices in light of how quickly technology is evolving in all disciplines so that qualified employees may be created to operate, investigate, and produce the most cutting-edge medical technology of the future.

Pharma R&D: The government intends to start a new pharmaceutical research and development program. Additionally, a few of the resources at the labs of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) would be made available to outside researchers for research purposes.

Teacher Training Reimagined: For a reinvented teacher training initiative, innovative pedagogy, curriculum change, iCT deployment, and a continual professional development survey would be adopted.

Integrated Online Platform for Upskilling: The government established an integrated online training platform to provide government workers with possibilities for ongoing learning and skill enhancement.

As part of Mission Karma Yogi, the center and the states are also implementing capacity-building programs for government personnel.

Centers of Excellence for AI Research: The Union Budget 2023 announced that three prestigious educational institutions will establish Centres of Excellence for artificial intelligence, helping to realize the vision of "Make AI in India and Make AI Work for India." The explosion in AI apps and technology prompted this.

Leading industry partners would perform multidisciplinary research in this setting, and state-of-the-art AI applications would be created to ensure scalable solutions in agriculture, health, and sustainable cities.