Is There Enough Public Resource for School Education?: Examining the Available Evidences
The enactment of RTE Act, 2009 imposes a duty on the Indian states to fulfill every child‟s right to elementary education. As education is in "concurrent list", both Centre and State Governments have responsibility to achieve the goal of universalization of elementary education.
Along with many other factors, financing of education is an important factor for provisioning of quality education in school. It has long been argued that public provisioning of school education is imperative and it needs more resources. But there is a counter argument from policy makers that the government provides enough resources for school education and the challenges do not lie in allocation, rather the problem is with under-utilisation.
The paper has tried to generate evidences from various lenses to establish inadequacy of government‟s financing of school education. Citing examples from existing education policies and pattern of budgetary allocation for the school education and its different components, the paper concludes that there is under-funding for school education and Government immediately needs to increase the resource envelope for education in general and school education in particular to realize the right to education in letter and spirit.
