#Budgets4Children Hits and Misses: The case of School Education in Assam
This article is part of #Budgets4Children series initiated by CivicDataLab to help citizens better understand child budgeting in Assam
What is #Budgets4Children?
Our friends at HAQ — Centre for Child Rights, began the practice of analysing #Budgets4Children in 2001. As they explain, the Budget for Children is “an attempt to disaggregate the allocations made specifically for programmes that benefit children from the overall budget.” It aims at tracking, monitoring, and analysing the budgetary allocations made for the well-being of children and studying the impact of such financial allocations and programs on the lives of children.
The ongoing pandemic is impacting our children disproportionately, affecting their learning, development, and growth opportunities. Thus, in this new series, we will be exploring #Budgets4Children by analysing various sectors through the lens of Assam’s state budgets over the past few years. We will be tackling a different issue in each post while underlining the intricacies of state budgets and #Budgets4Children. In this first post of the series, we will be exploring the School Education for children in Assam — where we will first be setting up the problem by understanding the status of Education and Children in Assam. We then look at the budgetary allocation and utilization of the Education grant (Grant 71) over the last four fiscal years — first, from a birds-eye view, then going into specific programs and schemes introduced by the state for children. We end the post by pointing towards problems associated with Grant 71 and #Budgets4Children.
The State of Education in Assam
Assam is the largest state of the eight sisters in the north-eastern (NE) region of the country with a population of over 3.12 crore in the 2011 census, among which 40 lakh are children between the ages of 0 to 6. Growing at over 16%, its population is expected to reach 3.5 crores by 2026. Addressing the needs of the children of the state is important in achieving inclusive growth and development of the state in the years to come.
Strides have been made over the last 9 years in terms of improving a few performance indicators associated with education in the state of Assam. In 2013, ASER (Annual Status of Education Report) reported that an estimated 6.6% of children between the ages of 7 to 16 were out of school, with the percentage of children out of school going up with their ages. It was not just the enrollment rates, but also the educational outcomes that required improvement, with the same report finding that only 34.9% of children in the fifth standard were able to read a second standard level text. In 2020, the number of students out of school according to ASER’s latest findings has come down to 2.2% of children between the ages of 7 and 16, the chart below shows the progress the state has made in decreasing the number of children “not in school.”
One of the ways the state has been able to drastically reduce the number of children not going to schools is by several targeted interventions such as waiver of admission fee for those who need, provision of scholarships, provision of meals, free textbooks, sanitary pads for girls and others to help keep children from dropping out or not enrolling in a school. It is the government’s role to create, fund and finance programs, schemes and schools that will improve the status of education and children at school. In this piece, we will be looking at and analysing the Assam state budget allocation to children’s school education.
Analysing budgetary allocation for School Education through Key Grants
Grant 71 of the Assam budget is a specific grant that allocates finances to the Directorate of Elementary Education for administrative purposes, programs, schemes, nutrition, scholarships, stipends, training for teachers, construction of schools etc. Chart 1 below shows the budget allocation of Grant 71 from 2016–17 onwards. Some key observations that we can make with regard to the government spending behaviour for school education are as follows.
- We notice that consistently from 2017–18, the revised estimate (RE) of the allocation to Grant 71 has been over the budget estimate (BE) announced prior to the fiscal year.
- Despite the ambitious estimates and allocation made to the budget at its announcement and re-appropriation, in 2019–20, the actual spending for the year was only 75% of the revised estimate (RE) i.e. there was a 25% underutilization of funds allocated.
- The trend for actual spending of Grant 71 gives away an important detail that the actual spending by the state has been consistently lower than the allocation at the beginning of the year or the revised projections.
4. From Chart 3, we find that the state has allocated and spent on average 4.5% of the state’s GDP to education, and less than 1% is spent on the direct well-being of children. The recommended spending on education is 6% of the GDP (Kothari Commission on Education 1964–66).
5. Chart 4 reveals that the state of Assam on average has allocated ₹3,197 per child between 2017–18 and 2021–22 and between 2017–18 and 2019–20 on average spent ₹2,118 per child for their direct well-being through the Grant 71.
Since our analysis is specifically with respect to the child budget, we need to understand that the entirety of the Grant 71 — Education budget is not for children. There are 7 sub-major heads that the Grant 71 budget is divided into — Adult Education, Elementary Education, General, General Education, Office Buildings, Language Development and Secondary Education.
So now we look at the actual allocation to the direct well-being of children. Chart 5 below gives a summary of the budgetary allocations and actual spending of accounting heads that are directly related to child well-being (Direct well-being here refers to the amount of allocation going to children as a form of direct benefit transfer). We find that for every ₹100 allocated in Grant 71 (between 2017–18 and 2021–22), at average only ₹14.4 is budgeted for the direct well-being of children. Between 2017–18 and 2019–20, at average, only ₹13.1 out of the allocated ₹100 in Grant 71 was actually spent by the state on the direct well-being of the children. The rest of the ₹85.6 allocated is going for office/administrative expenses, salaries for teachers, wages for workers or other non-children related budget heads such as — Adult Education or Office Buildings. Chart 5 shows us the allocation and utilization of Grant 71 to the direct well-being of the children.
Important Note — Directly related to child well-being is calculated by not accounting for allocation made to adult education, salaries, allowances, office expenses, pensions, training programs for teachers, wages and salaries of assisting staff and other such expenditure. But by only accounting for the expenditure of the state that will directly benefit the children (in form of Direct Benefit Transfers) — with expenses such as — stipend and scholarships, supply of free textbooks to students, construction of classrooms, provision of food for students, sanitary pads at low cost to students and other such expenditures.
Below is the break-up of expenditure for ‘Sarva Siksha Abhiyan’ in the FY 2021–22 under the sub-major head ‘Elementary Education’ — we find that of the ₹2180 crore that was allocated to the universal elementary education mission of the central and state government, only ₹1000 crore is going to non-salary or capital asset creation. This is a similar picture in other accounting heads wherein, the majority of the funds are allocated to teacher training, salaries, office expenses, construction or maintenance of infrastructure, with only a small chunk actually benefitting the children directly.
Flagship programs & schemes for children in Assam
Now that we have understood the fiscal allocation made to education and grant 71 over the last 4 years in Assam, let’s take a closer look at the various key programs and related spending:
Sarva Siksha Abhiyan (or Axom Sarba Siksha Abhijan — SSA) is Government of India’s flagship programme for achieving universalization of Elementary Education which aims to make education for children of ages 6–14 years free and compulsory — and ensure it is served as a fundamental right of our children. Considering the goal and scale of the program, we also observe that its allocation has consistently been on the rise over the years as well as we can see from Chart 3 below. For SSA, the funds allocated have been wholly utilized in 2017–18 and 2018–19, but in 2019–20 we see a considerable drop in the utilization.
Free Supply of Textbooks — In 2016, the Assam state government unveiled a scheme to provide free textbooks to the students studying in government schools. In 2017–18, this was extended to students studying in classes 9th to 12th, irrespective of their parent’s income under the Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (scheme set up for the development of secondary education in the country). Chart 4 below shows the allocation and utilization of the scheme.
ASER in its 2020 report discusses whether children have textbooks at home and find that Assam has a very high proportion of children that have textbooks for their current grade. The state is also at par with private schools, boasting 98.2% of children in Assam have textbooks for their current grade. This is much amongst the highest in the country, with the national average for government schools still standing at 84.1%.
Free Uniforms to Students — In 2018, the then minister of education in Assam, announced that the government would “soon extend the supply of free uniforms to students from the existing Class VIII to Class XII.” In 2019–20 an allocation of ₹25 crores was made, but more recent budget documents show that the actual expenditure for that year on the program was ₹0. It will be crucial to observe utilization data of the last two financial years (2020–21 and 2021–22), to see whether the state can boost utilization of funds for student uniforms.
Scholarships and Stipends — Each year, the government allots a significant amount for scholarships and stipends for students. This was given to students below the poverty line under the Assam Bikash Yojna in the form of a waiver of admission fees. Scholarships were also given to minority girl students and physically handicapped students, along with “military and allied Training scholarships.” These scholarships also act as an incentive for students to stay in school and take up further studies without the worry of funds for admission fees and other expenses. The funds allocated for scholarships and stipends for the years evaluated have been utilized almost fully with the exception of 2019–20.
In 2019–20, the government of Assam allocated ₹50 crores to ‘Scholarship Scheme for minority Girls Students’ which is the reason why there is a jump in the allocation for Scholarships and Stipends in 2019–20, but this ₹50 crore was not utilized at all. Further in 2020–21, the budgetary allocations for ‘Scholarship Scheme for minority Girls Students’ was reduced to ₹4.75 crores in 2020–21 and increased to ₹12 crores in 2021–22.
The mystery of large budget allocation to “Others” in Assam’s School Education funds
Beyond key programs and schemes taken up by the state government, we also looked at some of the accounting heads that don’t give us accurate information on expenditure by just limiting to descriptions like “Others.” There are a total of 590 out of 2344 entries between the financial year 2018–19 and 2021–22 budget heads in Grant 71, that have been listed as “Others” in the last most accounting information (i.e. the Voucher Head). This is a total of 25% of all allocations in Grant 71 in the 4 years, which do not give the specific information of the budgetary allocation.
This chart above shows a concerning rising trend in the funds allocated to the category “Others” with no specific entity, subject, or institution being clarified as the particular beneficiary of the allotted amount. There is a significant increase in allocation for “Others” from ₹2850 crores in 2017–18 to over ₹5033 crores in 2021–22. Chart 11 below gives the % of Budget Estimates, Revised Estimates, and Actuals of the total Grant 71 allocation that each year has been disclosed as “Others” at the Voucher Head level of the budget.
We find that on average 25% of the amount in Grant 71 has failed to disclose the specifics of the spending. But the worrying trend while looking at the “Others” is the increasing number of entries and allocation made with ambiguous specifics — as we see from the trendline in the above chart, we see how budget allocation with “Others” in the accounting heads has been increasing from 2017–18 onwards from 26% to 34% in 2021–22.
We find that the biggest contributor to the “Others” head is Grants-in-Aid — Salary and Non-Salary that contribute up to 80–90% of the public expenditure that is listed as “Others” — with the third most contributor being “Major Works” averaging 7–17% differing each fiscal year. This means that the state’s budget documents fail to share necessary details on key accounting heads like Salaries, Grants-in-aid, Major Works, and more.” The problem with such vague entries is that they make it difficult to do thorough budgetary analysis, timely audits, conduct research, and look at socio-economic outcomes of allocations made by the government. The analysis and audits conducted by think tanks, researchers, journalists, auditors enable citizens to hold the government accountable for their use of public money and establish what works, what does not work, and what needs to change or be addressed in the budget allocations for to allow for inclusive growth.
Homework for the State to address issues on School Education Funding
Overall, the state has made some steps in improving school education coverage and the status of education for children in the state. One of the issues, that the state must try to address is to increase the share of the budget that directly benefits children, with currently only 14.4% of the budget (here, only Grant 71) spent for direct wellbeing with the rest being spent on administrative, construction, training of teachers — which do not directly benefit the child. The state must try to increase its share of allocation that directly benefits children. Another key pertaining problem in the case of Assam seems to be the consistent underutilization of school education funds. At the same time, programs such as ‘Free Supply of Textbooks’ have been proven to be very effective with Assam being one of the few states with a very high percentage of government school children with current grade textbooks. Lastly, the state should actively prioritise renaming accounting heads that fall other of “Others”, this will increase fiscal accountability and more trust in school education funds among researchers, auditors, policymakers, and citizens at large.
Disclaimer — This is not an exhaustive analysis of Assam’s state budget allocations for children, but is an analysis of child-related allocations and utilizations on the State’s budget for School Education. We will primarily be looking at Grant 71, dedicated to Education (Elementary, Scy, Etc.) which is accounted for by the “Education (Elementary, Secondary Etc.) Department” We also account for the spending on Education in Grant 77 — N.C. Hills Autonomous Council, Grant 76 — Karbi-Anglong Autonomous Council and Grant 78 — Bodoland Territorial Council to account for the state’s entire spending on School Education. All budget data has been sourced from Open Budgets India — India’s largest open data platform of budgetary datasets.
References
- Read more about HAQ’s work on Budget for Children — Budget for Children | HAQ : Centre for Child Rights (haqcrc.org)
- 2013 ASER Report
- 2016 ASER Report
- 2018 ASER Report
- 2020 ASER Report
- Free Supply of Textbooks (Old Policy) | Assam Tribune
- Free Supply of Textbook (New Policy) | The Indian Express
- Kothari Commission (1964–66): Aims, objectives & major recommendations (NCERT)
- Assam OpenBudgetsIndia Expenditure Portal for Grant 71 data
About the Author
Phani Datta is a Budget Research Fellow at CivicDataLab. He is currently an MA Economics student at O.P. Jindal Global University. He has a newsletter of his own called — Finanomics where he writes about economics, business and finance. When he is not doom scrolling on Twitter, you will find him enjoying sports or watching re-runs of sitcoms.
