Focus on Education Sector for Telangana Budget 2022–23

Some Trends in Education Expenditure in Telangana:

• The budget estimates (BE) for expenditure on Education, Sports, Culture and Arts was Rs 13,49,827.30 lakhs — which was 5.9% of the total budgetary expenditure by the Telangana Government (Fig 1). However, as can be seen from Fig. 1, the share of expenditure on education is consistently lower than the national average. Furthermore, the gap between the respective shares only diverged from 2014–15 to 2021–22.

Figure 1

Source: Various rounds of State Finances: Study of Budgets published by RBI. (Note: The figures for 2020–21 and 2021–22 are based on revised (RE) and budget estimates respectively)

• Education’s share in the aggregate state government expenditure reduced from 11.2% in 2014–15 to 5.9% in 2021–22(BE). During the same period, the national average reduced from 16% to 13.9%. Incidentally, Telangana has the lowest expenditure share on education among all the states and union territories in the year 2021–22¹. Arunachal Pradesh (at 9.9%) is the only other state whose share is lower than 10%.

Figure 2

Source: Various rounds of State Finances: Study of Budgets published by RBI.

• Telangana’s share of education expenditure has also declined as a percentage of the state’s total development expenditure — from 15.8% in 2014–15 to 9% in 2021–22, as can be seen from Figure 2. A significant reduction (to the tune of 6 percent points) could be noted during the pandemic years from 14% in 2019–20.
• Nearly six percentage point decline could be observed in the share of revenue expenditure on education in the state’s total revenue expenditure from 13.4% to 7.6% (Fig. 3).On the other hand, there was no uniform trend in the share of education’s capital expenditure in the total capital outlay from 2014–15 to 2021–22. The highest share was observed in 2014–15 at 2.7%, and the lowest at 0.3% in 2020–21. There was however a consistent increase from 2016–17 to 2019–20, only to decline very sharply in the following fiscal year.

Figure 3

Source: Various rounds of State Finances: Study of Budgets published by RBI

Low spending on education and its impacts on school education in Telangana

The low share of education allocated to Telangana paints a worrisome picture, particularly in the light of two aspects: the impact of COVID-19 pandemic and the poor performance of schools in terms of infrastructure availability. The pandemic has seriously disrupted the education sector and had a detrimental effect on learning and all-round development for school going children. With the schools being shut down, online mode of teaching became the norm. However, the recently published Annual Status of Education Report for 2021 shows that in Telangana only 27.6% of the total government school children and 30.1% of the total school children were able to participate in online learning from home. The severe learning loss during this period affects the children not just academically, but also socially and emotionally — which was noted even by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Education, Women, Children and Youth in its 328th report². It was further emphasised in the report that this learning gap could lead to permanent withdrawal of children from schools. At the same time, the poor infrastructure of schools in Telangana is a problem that predates the pandemic itself.

Source: Unified District Information System for Education (UDISE+)

• It appears that in 2019–20, in the survey conducted by the Unified District Information System for Education Plus (UDISE+), the schools in Telangana lacked some of the basic infrastructure required to prepare for and engage in online learning (Table 1). For instance, the number of schools with internet availability was a meagre 20.8%. Computers were available in only 36.1% of schools in the state. Both these figures were lower than the national average and as well as every other South Indian state.The availability of internet and computers is much lower for state government and rural schools (Fig. 3). Internet was available for only 8.3% of the state government schools and 10% of the rural schools. While the computers were available in 24% of the state government and 25.6% of the rural schools.

Figure 3

Source: Computed from UDISE+

• Performance of Telangana on some of the other basic infrastructure is also significantly lower compared to other south Indian states and the national averages (Table 1). Only 40.9% of the total schools had access to functional toilets and urinals, compared to the all India average of 66.1% — a staggering difference. Only 16% of the schools had water purifiers, while the average stood at 25.3%.
• Table 2 depicts the percentage of rural schools in Telangana that had access to the respective facility, as reported in the Annual Status of Education Report 2018, published by the Pratham Foundation. No significant improvement could be observed in the data for the reported facilities. It can be seen that from 2010 to 2018, the percentage of rural schools with no available computer fell by only one percentage point. In fact, it had increased from 86.5% in 2014 to 87.8% in 2016 and further to 89.5% in 2018.

Source: Annual Status of Education Report (2018)³

• The schools with electric connection has also declined from 89.1% to 86.4% from 2016 to 2018. The percentage of schools with drinking water facilities has only improved marginally by 2.4 percent points during the period. The drinking water availability was reduced from 64.8% to 57.2%.

Way Ahead for Budget 2022–23

• Invest in improving infrastructure: On an immediate basis, the state government should invest in improving the basic infrastructure at schools such as constructing toilets, providing for drinking water facilities etc. In addition to that, digital infrastructure needs a massive improvement. At the minimum, coverage of the internet and computer facilities should be enhanced significantly. Teachers should be provided adequate training to temporarily adapt to online mode of teaching. Apart from that, students and teachers should be provided with electronic equipment, if they are in need, to bridge the digital divide. Rural schools should be given special attention.
• Invest in setting up small community digital centres across the state — particularly in remote parts. These centres can be places of learning that could be equipped with computers, internet and other learning resources. This could be implemented as an alternative, in those places where it is difficult for all students in that locality to have an internet connection. These centres could be attached to the local government office, where internet availability is easier to establish.
• Budget should provide for conducting surveys and studies to assess the impact of the pandemic: Through these the extent of learning loss, the extent of dropouts, the extent of online learning and participation etc, could be evaluated. These surveys are an imperative to designing the necessary approaches to revive from the disruption caused due to the pandemic.
• Establishing quality infrastructure to bridge the learning divide between private urban schools and government schools: In addition to the temporary measures, long-term capacity building should also be addressed. The cabinet had already announced the “Mana Ooru Mana Badi” scheme to improve the infrastructure with an outlay of more than Rs. 7000 Crores. The aim should be to invest in the overall infrastructural development of schools — constructing new buildings and classrooms with high-quality infrastructure and learning equipment (smart classrooms). Quality laboratories, sporting facilities, cultural centres, workshops, etc. should also be developed.
• Fill the vacant teacher posts and address the concerns of existing staff: Allocations should improve the quality of education & enhance learning outcomes. Hence, addressing the concerns of teachers and taking their feedback into consideration will go a long way. A recent report points out that there is a vacancy of 20,000 teacher posts⁴. The low student-teacher ratio adversely affects the quality of teaching and learning. The teachers have also been demanding that the digital teaching equipment such as smart classrooms (which have become commonplace in urban private schools) be established immediately to aid audio-visual learning⁵.
• Address concerns arising out of english-medium implementation: While there is no question about the importance of English language training in our current socio-economic milieu, changing the medium is not the solution to a number of problems that are plaguing the school education in our state. A proper study should be conducted on the feasibility of such a move and the impacts that would have on the learning outcomes. One potential problem could be the lack of home support for children whose parents do not have knowledge of English, and therefore will not be able to effectively assist their children in their day to day learning. Such a situation should not force the parents who are economically weaker, to seek extra support in the form of ‘tuitions’. This problem would get exacerbated if the teachers themselves are not adequately trained and equipped to teach in English. Adequate training should be provided for those currently in service and the budgetary allocations should also account for additional recruitments — to cater to the increased demand for government schools if English language is to be implemented. At the same time, necessary arrangements should be made to those teacher aspirants who might get affected if preference is given to recruiting for English medium teaching.

Notes:

1. From the Statement 26 of RBI’s State Finances: Study of Budgets
2. https://rajyasabha.nic.in/rsnew/Committee_site/Committee_File/ReportFile/16/144/328_2021_8_15.pdf
3. http://img.asercentre.org/docs/ASER%202018/Release%20Material/English%20files/telangana.pdf
4. Report titled “English medium education: Shortage of teachers may test Telangana govt’s intent”. Authored by Mohsin Ali and published by the New Indian Express on 20th Jan, 2022
5. Report titled “Focus on infra at govt schools, teachers to Telangana govt” published by Telangana Today on 6th Feb, 2022

Sai Chandan Kotu is a Budget Research Fellow at CivicDataLab. A version of this was submitted as his recommendation to the Government of Telangana for the State Budget 2022–23.