Page 22 - EW may 2026

Education News

tion of skills education, and training newspapers are mere window-dress- Hyderabad, the economic, adminis-
teachers to teach in English. This will ing. The ads now have to be followed trative and cultural hub of undivided
require recruitment of teachers on a up with adequate budgetary provision Andhra Pradesh was awarded to
massive scale. Currently, Karnataka for government schools to build “the Telangana. Andhra’s loss was not
faces a huge shortage of teachers best government school system in the merely geographic; it stripped the
— 45,590 teaching posts are vacant country”. But the messy finances and new state of its established ecosys-
against the total sanctioned strength wrong spending priorities of succes- tem of universities, industries and
of 178,935 in the state’s 41,088 gov- sive governments of Karnataka indi- governance infrastructure.
ernment primary schools. Filling up cate that this goal is a long way off. Over the subsequent decade, the
existing vacancies and recruiting new Reshma Ravishanker (Bengaluru) question of a permanent capital
teachers will require a huge budget- remained unsettled, with policy
ary outlay. ANDHRA PRADESH oscillations between centralised and
Against this the state government decentralised models. The recent
has allocated 10.7 percent (Rs.45,286 Shining new capital decision of the Telugu Desam Party
crore) of its Budget 2026-27 towards (TDP) government led by two-term
expenditure for education — a lower n april 7, 2026 president chief minister of undivided Andhra
percentage than of other states (av- Droupadi Murmu gave assent Pradesh and since 2024 of new AP,
eraging 14.5 percent). Against this, Oto the Andhra Pradesh Reor- N. Chandrababu Naidu to reaf-
the budgetary allocation for freebies/ ganisation (Amendment) Act, 2026, firm Amaravati as the sole capital
handouts is Rs.51,286 crore. formally designating Amaravati as marks a decisive closure of pro-
According to Prof. A.S. Seeth- the sole and permanent capital of longed uncertainty
aramu, former professor of educa- Andhra Pradesh. Passed by both Returned to office in 2014, Naidu
tion, Institute of Social & Economic Houses of Parliament in Delhi, the was tasked with rebuilding a state
Change, Bengaluru, the Congress gov- amendment revises the original 2014 without a capital or established
ernment’s education guarantees have ecosystem. However in
a chance of succeeding only if the state 2019, Naidu and the TDP
government goes ahead with its KPS suffered a massive defeat
(Karnataka Public Schools) magnet in new Andhra Pradesh’s
scheme under which small govern- legislative assembly election
ment schools (often with fewer than with the YSR Congress Party
50 students) are clustered with KPS securing a huge 151-seat
institutions to create composite, well- majority in the assembly.
equipped K-12 schools with average The YSR Congress and Chief
enrolment of 1,200 students. Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan
The state government will be able Reddy vetoed the Amara-
“to implement its education guar- vati proposal introducing a
antees only if small under-resourced three-cities capital envision-
government schools are merged or ing Visakhapatnam as the
clustered into 6,000 KPS schools — Amaravati table top model: built-in knowledge city executive capital, Amaravati
one in every gram panchayat of the as the legislative capital, and
state. Students’ learning outcomes legislation and conclusively replaces Kurnool as the judicial capital — a
will improve if they study in well-re- the three-capitals framework of the model of decentralised development.
sourced composite campuses. But this previous YSR Congress government However, according to most academ-
requires the government to ensure (2019-24), bringing to an end a ics and policy pundits, the three-cap-
good rural roads and free dedicated decade-long policy ambiguity over itals experiment proved unworkable
school buses to enable children to at- the state’s administrative capital. in practice, prompting administra-
tend KPS schools conveniently and The back story of this historic tive delays, increased logistical costs,
safely. This will require the state gov- decision is that after the bifurcation and diluted institutional focus.
ernment to launch a massive teacher of undivided Andhra Pradesh into Five years later in the state’s
recruitment and training programme Telangana (pop.38-39 million) and legislative election of 2024, TDP
and substantially increase its budget- Andhra Pradesh (50 million) in 2014 led by Naidu was returned to power
ary outlay for education,” says Seeth- — following an uneasy interregnum with a massive majority of over 130
aramu. of ten years when Hyderabad served seats in the 175-strong legislative
Obviously, the government’s ex- as the joint capital of the two states assembly, enabling a policy reset and
pensive full-page ads in mainstream — the latter was without a capital, as resurrection of his plan to establish

22 EDUCATIONWORLD MAY 2026