Students in govt schools up from 15 lakh to 18 lakh

New Delhi: Ahead of presenting the Budget for FY 2022-23, the Delhi government on Friday tabled its Outcome Budget for the current fiscal — noting that Delhi government schools had achieved a new high on enrollment of children — going from 15 lakh to 18 lakh students. Moreover, the outcome report showed that projects under the Directorate of Education were "on track".

The "Outcome Budget" for 2021-22 showed that out of 60 critical indicators of the Directorate of Education, 72 per cent were "on track". In 2020-21, this figure stood at 84 per cent.

The major initiatives of the directorate include construction of 13,181 new classrooms till February 2022, admission of 25,327 students under the Right to Education, installing CCTV cameras in 577 out of 728 government school buildings.

Meanwhile, the Economic Survey, also released on Friday, showed that the share of enrolment in private schools at primary and middle level had increased significantly from 31.07 per cent in 2014-15 to 46.72 per cent in 2019-20. However, it came down to 43.91 per cent in 2020-21.

Similarly, the share of enrolment in private schools at secondary and senior secondary level had also increased from 29.08 per cent in 2014-15 to 31.90 per cent in 2019-20, but declined to 29.94 per cent in 2020-21.

The share of enrolment in government and government-aided schools is 39.36 per cent of the total admissions in Delhi in 2020-21.

It also said that 'Deshbhakti Curriculum' and 'Desh Ke Mentor' programme were also rolled out while three lakh children received a seed money of Rs 2,000 each under the Business Blasters programme leading to generation of 51,000 business ideas.

During 2021-22, 20 Schools of Specialised Excellence (SoSE) were started which cover the domains of STEM, Humanities, Performing and Visual Arts, and high-end 21st century skills with about 2,300 students. The Delhi government has now added 11 new SoSEs to this list and this year, the applications crossed 48,000, Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia said as he tabled the Outcome Budget.

The Economic Survey also highlighted that the Delhi Board of School Education (DBSE) was launched in March 2021 and it entered into a partnership with International Baccalaureate (IB) to "inculcate the cutting edge pedagogy and assessments in the schools of Delhi".

The board started functioning with 30 schools of the Delhi government. In the next few years, all schools of the Delhi government and willing private schools may be affiliated to DBSE, it said.

For higher education, the outcome budget showed that 63 per cent of the indicators were "on track".

It said that 95 per cent of the work has been completed on the east campus of Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University and it is likely to become functional this year.

A total of 6,820 students have been provided financial assistance of Rs 48.14 crore during 2021-22 under the Merit cum Means Linked Financial Assistance Scheme as against Rs 24.01 crore provided to 3,760 students in 2020-21, the report said.

The Delhi government's technical education institutes have awarded 84 Ph.D degrees up to December 31,2021 against an annual target of 114 Ph.D degrees, while 1,670 research papers were published by the faculty of such institutes during the same period as against 1,960 papers in 2020-21.

The total expenditure on education has increased from Rs 6,555 crore in 2014-15 to Rs 15,707 crore in 2020-21, the survey highlighted.