Government Initiatives for Education

Just like food, clothing and shelter, an individual needs education as a basic requirement. The UPA government passed one of the most crucial parts of legislation, Right to Education Act, in 2009. According to this act, every Indian citizen has the fundamental right to education and children between the age of 6 and 14 get assured education. The age group between 6 and 14 constitute to almost 22 crore children in India. Out of this, approximately 1.1 crore children are not in school. However, this act faces a problem of good and efficient teachers to teach the children.

Role of Government in Education

The major role of the government is to ensure that every individual in India is educated. The Indian government comes up with new initiatives and plans in order to make sure that the literacy rate goes higher. In India, the state as well as the union government controls majority of the universities.

The major role of government as far as education is concerned is,

• To make sure that the education policy remains uniform are better implemented.
• To ensure that the funds are utilised properly.
• To provide effective and good quality leadership with better discipline.
• To provide improved education standards.

List of education plans

In 1968 and 1986, the National Policy on Education (NPE) was formulated by the Indian central government. The Programme of Action (POA) was also reinforced in 1992. Several measures were started by the government like the District Primary Education Programme (DPEP) and Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), which focused on everyone's education in India. The government had set up Navodaya Vidyalaya and various other schools in each district such as opening established universities and advanced female education.

One of the significant features has been SSA's extension to Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan, which is a form of secondary education. Focusing on the primary education, another special programme called Integrated Education for Disabled Children (IEDC) was initiated in 1974. This later changed to Inclusive Education at Secondary Stage.

In 1965, the Kendriya Vidyalaya mission was another notable unique programme, which was launched specially for the central government employees of India. For information on primary level education, a multilingual website is present with rich content which enables the children to discuss on topics related to education. Now, the government of India has initiated Saakshar Bharat Mission, which focuses on the literacy of women. With the help of this scheme, the female literacy will come down to half to its current level.

Expenditure on Education Plans

Despite heavy investments made in education, around 25% of India's population still remains illiterate and merely 15% Indian students manage to pass high school. The NPE emphasises n spending a good amount on education, which is 6% of India's Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

For the tenth Five year Plan of 2002-2007, a spending of 65.6% from the overall budget of education of 438.25 billion rupees was outlined by the Indian central government. Out of the total budget, as much as 287.5 billion rupees was spent on elementary level education, about 9.9% or 43.25 billion rupees was used for secondary education and 9.5% or 41.765 billion rupees was spent on higher level education.

Year	Expenditure (in Millions of Rupees)
1951-56	1530
1956-61	2730
1961-66	5890
1966-69	3230
1969-74	7860
1974-79	9120
1980-85	25300
1985-90	76300
1990-92	47270
1992-97	196000
1997-2002	203816
2002-2007	438250

For financial year 2011-2012, the central government had allocated a sum of 38,957 crore rupees for Department of School Education and Literacy, which deals with primary level education. Within this allotment, about 21,000 crore rupees was spent for 'Sarva Siksha Abhiyan'.