In government’s rupee, only 1.6 paise for education

NEW DELHI: The number of primary schools in the city is declining and government’s expenditure on education—as a percentage of gross state domestic product—has stagnated although student enrollment continues to rise year after year.
The latest economic survey report shows student enrollment in Delhi has increased by 4.91 lakh but the number of schools from the pre-primary to secondary levels has declined since 2005-06.Senior secondary schools, though, have increased marginally in the same period.
The report shows that expenditure on education is stagnant at 1.60% since 2010-11 after a drop of 0.03 percentage points from 2009-10. In fact, the decline started in 2005-06 when the percentage dropped to 1.44% from 1.67% in 2004-05. Between 2005-06 and 2007-08 the expenditure declined to 1.36%, then rose to 1.56% in 2008-09 and 1.63% in 2009-10. But it again declined to 1.60% a year later and remained there in 2011-12.
Interestingly, while the number of senior secondary schools increased in general, in 2010-11 the number of primary schools, middle schools and secondary schools decreased or stagnated. The number of primary schools declined to 2,613 in 2010-11 from 2,636 in 2009-10. The number of primary schools had peaked in 2005-06 when it was 2,668.
Enrollment data shows the sharpest rise in number of students in 2009-10 and 2010-11. In 2010-11 the growth in overall enrollment was 1.81 lakh even though in the same period the number of primary and middle schools declined and just six secondary schools were added.
However, the state has performed comparatively well in terms of literacy and per capita expenditure on education. Literacy in Delhi increased to 86.34% in 2011 after maintaining a near 5% average decadal growth since 1961.
As compared to the national literacy rate, literacy levels among Delhi’s women and men have been higher by 18.7 and 10.7 percentage points, respectively. Per capita expenditure has increased three-fold since 2005-06, touching Rs 2,969 in 2011-12 from Rs 1,050 in 2005-06. While the national per capita expenditure in 2009-10 was Rs 1,323, in Delhi it was Rs 2,023.
A large part of this per capita expenditure has been on tuition fees, and the largest per capita spending has been on technical education.