The high dropout rates in schools in several states, including Karnataka, during 2020-21, as revealed by data from the Ministry of Education, is a matter of concern when the education sector is considered to be recovering from the damage caused by the damage caused by the Covid pandemic. Karnataka, with a dropout rate of 14.6%, is in the company of states like Bihar and Gujarat, which had dropout rates higher...

Scroll.in Though the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 (RTE Act) has refocussed attention on school education in recent years, some fundamental problems continue to plague the system. Despite the constitutional and legal obligations of governments, education budgets have remained modest and woefully inadequate to requirements. While there has been a reasonable expansion of coverage and enrolment in schools, the fundamental issue of poor learning outcomes, especially...

Newsclick There is an acute shortage of teachers in government-run primary, upper primary and composite schools in Uttar Pradesh, despite the guidelines on the teacher-to-student ratio issued under the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act (RTE) of 2009. The new academic session of Uttar Pradesh Basic Education Board schools is about to begin next month (April 1) but about 51,000 posts of assistant teachers are lying vacant in the...

Accountability Initiative, Centre for Policy Research At the start of the Financial Year (FY) 2022-23, GoI allocated the highest budget for Samagra Shiksha since its inception at Rs. 37,383 crore Budget Estimates (BEs). This was 25 percent higher than the Revised Estimates (REs) for FY 2021-22. An additional Rs. 447 crore was sought through the supplementary budget in December 2022, bringing the revised allocations to Rs. 37,831 crore. The pace of GoI...

DeCEDA/Qrius 2022 was a milestone year for India. India walked into 2022 with an infectious wave of Covid-19 impacting lakhs of people, the wave receded a few weeks into the year. As hopes for a post-pandemic recovery surged, war in Ukraine brought in new challenges for the economy. With supply chains disrupted, global sanctions imposed on Russia, prices of fuel and food shot up. Inflation, already on a high from pent-up...