Page 48 - EW March 2021

Cover Story

UNION BUDGET 2021-22 administrative activities of the Centre and the states/Union
Promises sans provision territories.
• For children with hearing impairments, the government will
n her Union Budget 2021-22 address to Parlia- work on standardisation of Indian Sign language
Iment and the country on February 1, finance across the country.
minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced several • Senior and retired teachers will be engaged
measures for “reinvigorating human capital”. for individual mentoring of school teachers and
Among them: educators through constant online/offline support
• More than 15,000 schools will be qualitatively on subjects, themes and pedagogy.
strengthened to include all components of the • A holistic progress card is envisaged to pro-
National Education Policy. They shall emerge vide students with valuable information on their
as exemplar schools in their regions, handhold- strengths, areas of interest, needed areas of fo-
ing and mentoring other schools to achieve the cus and thereby helping them in making optimal
ideals of the policy. career choices.
• 100 new Sainik Schools will be set up in partnership with • Online modules covering the entire gamut of adult education
NGOs/private schools/states. will be introduced.
• In Budget 2019-20, I had mentioned about the setting up of • During the year, despite the Covid-19 pandemic, we have
a Higher Education Commission of India. We would be intro- trained more than 3 million elementary school teachers digital-
ducing legislation this year to implement the same. It will be ly. In 2021-22, we will enable the training of 5.6 million school
an umbrella body having four separate vehicles for standard- teachers through the National Initiative for School Heads and
setting, accreditation, regulation and funding. Teachers for Holistic Advancement (NISTHA).
• Many of our cities have various research institutions, uni- • We will introduce CBSE board exam reforms in a phased
versities and colleges supported by the government of India. manner to be effective from the 2022-23 academic year. Ex-
Hyderabad for example, has about 40 such major institutions. ams will move away from rote-learning and students shall be
In nine such cities, we will create formal umbrella structures tested on their conceptual clarity, analytical skills and applica-
so that these institutions can have better synergy while also tion of knowledge to real-life situations.
retaining their internal autonomy. A Glue Grant will be set aside • To promote enhanced academic collaboration with foreign
for this purpose. higher educational institutions, a regulatory mechanism to
• For accessible higher education in Ladakh, I propose to set permit dual and joint degrees, twinning arrangements and
up a Central University of Leh. other such mechanisms will be devised.
• Standards will be developed for all school teachers in the “However, most of these interventions either do not have
form of National Professional Standards for Teachers (NPST) any budgetary implications or are not reflected in the budget
for all 9.2 million teachers of the public and private school documents in any form. Similarly, the proposition of strength-
systems countrywide. ening 15,000 schools as ‘exemplar schools’ in their regions
• A unique indigenous toys-based learning pedagogy for all towards achieving the goals of NEP 2020, do not have an ac-
levels of school education will be developed. tion, undermining implementation of the proposed initiative,”
• A National Digital Educational Architecture (NDEAR) will be comment authors of Budget in the Time of the Pandemic — An
set up within the context of a Digital First Mindset where the Analysis of the Union Budget 2021-22 published by Centre
Digital Architecture will not only support teaching and learn- for Budget & Governance Accountability, a Delhi-based think
ing activities but also educational planning, governance and tank.

upon BPS (budget private schools) for their children. This has been ad- that human capital development is
which would make them eligible for vocated by education voucher scheme the condition precedent of national
debt repayment moratoriums and proponents for quite a while. Such development, it’s baffling that mod-
soft loans for digitisation of teaching- child-centric structural reforms in ernisation and universalisation of
learning. This would save the jobs of preschool-higher secondary education primary-secondary education has
over 1 million teachers in this era of are overdue,” says Kingdon. been given rock-bottom priority in
high unemployment. This would also Indeed given widespread aware- post-independence India’s national
have been a good time to introduce ness among Indian economists and development programme.
direct benefit transfer of the not un- development scientists — scores of The painful truth routinely obfus-
substantial per-pupil amount spent by whom have risen to high positions cated by tub-thumping nationalists,
government, into the bank accounts of in international institutions such as complacent academics and shallow
their parents to enable them to choose the World Bank, IMF, and various media pundits, is that 70 years after
the best private or government school affiliates of the United Nations — independence and formulation of 13

48 EDUCATIONWORLD MARCH 2021