Budget 2020: Govt announces Rs 99,300 cr for education sector; new education policy to be announced soon

A sum of Rs 99,300 crores for education for the year 2020-21 will be provided, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Saturday while presenting the second Union Budget.

FM Nirmala Sitharaman: We propose Rs 99300 crores for education sector in 2020-21 and Rs 3000 crores for skill development. #BudgetSession2020 pic.twitter.com/7P4uqdP8JO

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“We propose Rs 99300 crores for the education sector in 2020-21 and Rs 3,000 crore for skill development,” Sitharaman said in the Parliament. [caption id=“attachment_6848771” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Representational image. Reuters[/caption] She also said that a new education policy will be announced soon, adding that “external commercial borrowings and FDI to be leveraged to improve the education system. In a major development, she said that full-fledged degree level online courses will soon be offered by the top educational institutions in the country. “Degree-level full-fledged online education programme to be offered by institutes in top 100 in National Institutional Ranking Framework,” Sitharaman added. The government has also proposed to set up a National Police University and a National Forensic Science University, the finance minister said. According to new proposals announced in the Budget, urban local bodies will provide internship to young engineers for a year so that they get an idea about the functioning of the government. In order to boost the Study in India programme, the Finance Minister proposed “conducting IND-SAT exam to be held in African and Asian countries for benchmarking foreign candidates who wish to study in the India”. “Dialogues have been held with state education ministries, Members of Parliament and other stakeholders on the education policy. Over 2 lakh suggestions were also received. The new education policy will be announced soon,” Sitharaman said, adding steps would be taken to enable sourcing of external commercial borrowing and FDI so as to deliver higher quality education. Observing that students in general stream as opposed to those in sciences or technology stream need their employment opportunities improved, she said about 150 higher education institutions will start apprenticeship, embedded degree diploma courses by March 2021. “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,” the finance minister said. In order to provide quality education to students of deprived sections of the society as well as those who do not have access to higher education it is proposed to start degree level full-fledged online education programme, Sitharaman announced. She said this shall be offered only by institutions ranked within top 100 in the national institutional ranking framework and initially, only a few such institutions would be asked to offer such programmes. — With inputs from agencies Follow full coverage of Union Budget 2020-21 here