VIJAYAWADA: General Education saw a significant jump in budgetary allocation for 2023-24. The State government has earmarked Rs 32,198.39 crore for the sector, compared to the Rs 27,704.38 crore for 2021-22. But the allocation to Technical Education is meagre as the government has allocated just Rs 512.37 for technical education and it was Rs 529.93 crore in 2022-23 fiscal year.
As much as 16.87 per cent of the total budget has been allocated to the general education for the 2023-24 fiscal with a revenue of Rs 27,843.33 crore and the capital of Rs 4,355.06 crore, while it was Rs 30,077.20 crore in 2022-23 FY with the revenue of Rs 25,803.73 crore and capital of Rs 4,273.47 crore.
However, the YSRC government has earmarked a lion’s share of Rs 6,500 crore to Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy’s brainchild ‘Jagananna Amma Vodi’, which has been successful in decreasing the school dropouts and ensuring.
The government has spent Rs 19,618 crores and depositing Rs 15,000 in the accounts of 44.5 lakh mothers for the benefit of 84 lakh students. Finance Minister Buggana Rajendranath Reddy, while presenting the annual State Budget on Thursday, proposed to allocate an amount of Rs 29,690 crore for School Education Department and Rs 2,064 crore for Higher Education Department for the year 2023-24.
Meanwhile, Minister Buggana Rajendranath Reddy also announced that he would propose Rs 3,500 crores to the Mana Badi-Nadu-Nedu scheme for 2023-24 fiscal.With this scheme, Jagan’s government would modernise 15,715 schools in the state with 10 components of infrastructure, including additional classrooms, safe drinking water facility, building repair works, maintenance of toilets, electrification, painting, furniture, green boards, English labs and kitchens.
Encouraging the downtrodden to continue their education, the finance minister also proposed allocation of Rs 560 cr to ‘Jagananna Vidya Kanuka’ scheme to provide school kits to children consisting of school uniforms, textbooks, workbooks and teaching learning material, on which the government has spent Rs 2,368 cr so far since the inception of the scheme.
He proposed Rs 2,841 crore for ‘Jagananna Vidya Deevena’ and Rs 2,200 crore for ‘Jagananna Vasathi Deevana’ for the year 2023-24. From the year 2019, the government has spent Rs 9,249 crore on Jagananna Vidya Deevena and Rs 3,366 crore on Jaganna Vasati Deevena schemes so far.
Blending the conventional education with technology, Rajendranath Reddy said that their government has introduced smart TV rooms in the schools and provided 60,000 tabs to the teachers and 4.6 lakh tabs to the Class 8 students. who will attend their class 10 public exams in the academic year 2024-25.