Rs 2482 crore earmarked for education sector in Delhi budget

New Delhi: To spruce up the educational infrastructure, Rs 2,482 crore was on Friday allocated to the Education sector in the Delhi budget, which is approximately 14.8% of the plan outlay of Rs 16,700 crore.

Rs 350 crore was earmarked for the construction of 20 new schools in the budget presented by Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in Parliament.

"The existing educational infrastructure in the capital requires additional support. The enrollment in government schools is increasing approximately at the rate of 1 lakh every year and Delhi needs around 500 new schools, as per RTE norms.

"To meet this challenge, in the first phase, construction work of 20 new schools will be started during the current financial year. I propose to allot a sum of Rd 350 crore for this purpose," Jaitley said.

In order to enhance the quality of teaching, Delhi government will focus on training of teachers in course content, teaching skills and creating better teaching environment in government schools and training will be imparted to 20318 teachers through State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT).

A Skill Development Centre is proposed to be set up under PPP mode for which 37 acres of land has been acquired. The centre would train approximately 15000 students per years based on the needs of the industry, the Finance Minister said.

The government also pitched in for promoting languages like Urdu, Punjabi and Sanskrit.

Senior secondary schools exclusively for girls would be opened to promote girls educations and special emphasis would be given on improving sanitary conditions in government schools.

"Delhi is inhibited by a lot of linguistic communities and has four academies of Urdu, Sindhi, Punjabi and Hindi. It is proposed to take up project based financial support to these academies in the current financial year," he said.

Further, setting up of a new school of Planning, Architecture and Design at a cost of Rs 285 crore in East Delhi by Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University was also proposed.

Government also said that construction of National Institute of Technology, Delhi at Narela for which 51 acres of land has been procured will be expedited.