Budget 2020: Education Sector Gets Rs 99,300 Crore, New Policy Soon

On Saturday, the Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said that the government has allocated Rs 99,300 crore towards the education sector for the financial year 2020-21. Rs 3,000 was announced for skill development at the Union Budget presentation.

New Education Policy

Sitharaman said that the central government has received over 2 lakh suggestions on education in India and a new education policy will be announced by the government in this regard.

"By 2030, India is set to have the largest working-age population in the world. Not only do they need literacy but they need both job and life skills," she said.

"Dialogues have been held with State Education Ministries, Members of Parliament and other stake-holders about Education policy. Over 2 lakh suggestions were also received. The New Education Policy will be announced soon," Sitharaman added.

FDI
Further, to improve the quality of education in India by attracting talented teachers, innovation and build better labs, the government will take steps to bring in money into the country through External Commercial Borrowings and FDI (foreign direct investment).

Apprenticeship embedded degree/diploma courses
"About 150 higher educational institutions will start apprenticeship embedded degree/diploma courses by March 2021," in the services or technology stream.

Internship opportunities for new engineers

In Budget 2020, the government proposes to start a programme whereby urban local bodies across the country would provide internship opportunities to fresh engineers for a period up to one year.

Online education programme to students of deprived section
For those who do not have access to higher education or belong to deprives section of the society, the government has proposed to start degree level full-fledged online education programme.

"This shall be offered only by institutions who are ranked within top 100 in the National Institutional Ranking framework. Initially, only a few such institutions would be asked to offer such programmes," the finance minister said.

Ind-SAT exam
To make India a preferred destination for higher education, the government has proposed Ind-SAT to be held in Asian and African countries, under its "Study in India" programme.

"It shall be used for benchmarking foreign candidates who receive scholarships for studying in Indian higher education centres."

Policing science
National Police University and a National Forensic Science University are being proposed in the domain of policing science, forensic science, cyber-forensics etc.

Medical education
To meet the shortage of qualified medical doctors, it was proposed to:

• attach a medical college to an existing district hospital in PPP (private public partnership) mode.
• encourage large hospitals with sufficient capacity to offer resident doctors DNB/FNB courses under the National Board of Examinations.

Special training packages
FM proposed special bridge courses for teachers, nurses, para-medical staff and care-givers seeking employment abroad, to match the employers' standards. These will be designed by the Ministries of Health, Skill Development together with professional bodies and language requirements of various countries need also to be included.