'Liberalisation has hit school education'

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, JUNE 2. Perhaps for the first time, an official document admits that economic liberalisation has had an adverse effect on the Government's plans for school education, saying this has made the job of mobilising resources ``even more challenging.''

An Assessment Report, prepared by the Human Resource Development Ministry and the National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration, pointedly mentions the ``liberalisation policies and the accompanying structural adjustment processes'' as among the roadblocks in funding education reforms, though it hastens to add that the Government is making a ``conscious effort'' to give priority to basic education.

The report was presented at a meeting of the UNESCO- sponsored World Education Forum in Dakar, Senegal, in April and released here on Thursday along with the Dakar Framework for Action to achieve Education for All (EFA). Mr Abhimanyu Singh, joint secretary in the HRD Ministry and coordinator of the EFA National Assessment Group, and Dr R.Govinda of NIEPA, explained that it was as much an attempt to look back at various EFA initiatives as to outline strategies for the future.

Raising resources, the report says, continues to be a ``big challenge'' and a ``matter of concern'' despite a substantial increase in allocation for basic education in the past decade. However, the good news, it points out, is that there has been a shift in emphasis while allocating resources for education.

``The Government has made a conscious effort to tilt the allocation of resources within the education sector in favour of basic education'', the report notes, adding that what is particularly significant is the increase in the Plan expenditure on basic education.Even as the report commends the Government's ``commitment'' to raise the share of education in GDP to six per cent by the end of the current Plan period, a major part of which would go to the school sector.

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