Education Budget 2023 Reactions: Focus on enriching and empowering existing institutions — here’s what stakeholders think

‘National Digital Library for children, adolescents will herald a new era in community participation:’ Professor Debashis Chatterjee, Director IIM Kozhikode 

Union Budget 2023 is a holistic foundation for India of the future with an overall boost to education, skilling, job creation and entrepreneurship. The thrust on building digital and public infrastructure with a keen focus on sustainability, is a shot in the arm for education and entrepreneurship. The vision of creating Centers of Excellences in AI, national skill set centers and the boost to learn and adopt new age educational courses will definitely go a long way in filling skill and employability gaps. New initiatives like the National Digital Library for children and adolescents will herald a new era in community participation ably supported and guided by Higher Education Institutes like IIMs. This indeed is a solid blueprint laid out for India@2047, when independent India turns 100.

‘Opening institutes is easy, sustaining them towards excellency is difficult:’ Former IIT Director

Granted that Artificial Intelligence is going to be one of the biggest things in the future, and focused investments in AI are critical for keeping and creating jobs. However, launching new three centres of excellence for artificial intelligence is not the only reform needed to ensure that India moves up the ladder in the IT sector. Opening institutes is easy, but sustaining them toward excellency is difficult.

Experts should learn from the IIIT experience as they have not been able to achieve the same level of excellency as IITs. It is important to study why the IIT model work and then implement that in IIITs or new institutions. Even the infrastructure required to make the new institutes competent enough to meet global standards is also not an easy task.

The government today announced that the Children’s Book Trust and other sources will be encouraged to provide books and other material in regional languages. However, when it comes to the engineering sector, I am not in favour of this as this will create complete chaos in the system and negatively affect our USP in engineering education. In hard times like these, we need more unifying factors, rather than those that divide us.

The countries that do follow the teaching in regional languages are slowly moving towards English as a unified teaching language, but we are taking a step back with this decision.

As we have seen, now AI can help in real-time translation, so there is no need to bring a fundamental shift and change the whole education system. Also, a lot of teaching and research is mainly available in English, so having books and other material in regional language will create a gap in teaching.

‘Instead of opening colleges, enrich and empower existing medical colleges:’ Dr Rohan Krishan, President, FAIMA

The plan to increase new medical colleges and nursing colleges is not really required at present. There are a lot of medical and nursing colleges at the moment and instead of spending money there, we should enrich and empower the existing medical colleges. There must be a major vacancy in government sectors for doctors and nurses. We require good teachers in already established medical colleges to get better doctors. Just spending money on buildings of medical colleges and not hiring professionals is a wasteful activity.

‘Establishment of District Training Centres for educators will revolutionise education across India:’ Jyoti Arora, Principal, Mount Abu Public School, Rohini, New Delhi

Union Budget 2023 is an unusual budget. It is probably the first time when the union budget witnessed mention of teacher training, capacity-building programs, and a culture of reading. As an educationist, it is highly encouraging to see the budget’s focus. The establishment of District Training Centres for educators will revolutionise both public and private school education across India. Setting up National Digital Library and Physical Libraries at ward and panchayat levels is like a dream come true. National Book Trust has been entrusted with developing a reading culture by publishing content in several regional languages. This budget will ensure the implementation of NEP at the micro-level. At the same time, we expected some measures to support nation-building private school education. Overall with these announcements, we have entered Amrit Kaal in the true sense and spirit.

‘Nationwide apprenticeship program, PMKVY 4.0 will empower and inspire countless young people:’ Prof. Madhushree Sekher, Dean, School of Vocational Education, TISS, Mumbai

We heartily embrace the emphasis in this Union Budget 2023 on cultivating skills in accordance with the National Education Policy and economic initiatives aimed at generating employment opportunities for the younger generation. The nationwide apprenticeship program and the PM Kaushal Vikas Yojana 4.0 will empower and inspire countless young people to sharpen their abilities for more promising career prospects. Meanwhile, this budget brings cheer to the teaching community as they will undergo training through innovative teaching methods, curriculum transformation, continuous professional development, and the implementation of ICT. The establishment of an additional 30 Skill India International Centers, offering cutting-edge programs in fields such as coding, AI, IOT, mechatronics, drones, and the enhancement of various soft skills, as announced in this budget, is a phenomenal initiative. The budget as a whole is a positive step towards the growth and advancement of vocational education within the education sector.

‘Government must also create a performance management system for all teachers:’ Shantanu Rooj, Founder and CEO, TeamLease Edtech

The Indian education system has always complained about the non-availability of quality teachers. The current impetus on recruiting a large number of teachers and creating a sustainable teachers’ training programme equipping them with multilateral skills will go a long way in improving the quality of education in Indian schools. The government must also create a performance management system where there is a hope of rising and a fear of falling for all teachers. Recruiting teachers and providing them with relevant skills such that they can impart the right knowledge and skills will help in building employable youth in India.

‘A unified Skill India platform will offer a strong handholding to professionals across sectors:’ Mayank Kumar, Co-founder & MD, upGrad

The first Budget proposed under Amrit Kaal is revolutionary in many ways and encompasses 3 major themes: care, green, and digital. On-job training in new-age courses and impetus to demand-based skilling via a unified Skill India platform will offer a strong handholding to professionals across sectors for equipping them with the skills of tomorrow. We need skilled manpower to enable a higher employability rate within the country, which will also push the GDP upwards. Especially, with the setting up of three Centres of Excellence for AI to enable ‘Make AI for India’ and ‘Make AI work for India’ we would need more Data and Tech-trained professionals for peddling the growth across domains. We expect a wider collaboration between the government and TSPs (Technology Service Providers) in the coming times for ensuring our talent remains armed with future-ready skills and domain expertise. The right set of policies, learning resources, and Budgetary allocations like these have the potential of making India the Talent capital of the world. Another milestone of this Budget is the introduction of a National Digital Library for children and adolescents with quality resources in multiple languages will also amplify GOIs push towards ensuring higher adoption of digital learning across rural and remote regions and steering India’s growth momentum of becoming the Tech superpower in the next few years.