Delhi government on Monday set aside Rs 10,690 crore for education sector, the highest among all the plan heads, promising to make government schools better than private schools with robust infrastructure and teachers trained at “Harvard, Cambridge and Oxford”.
The government also announced that it is getting CCTV cameras installed in every classroom, whose feed would be “available to all officials, the Education Minister and parents”, and set aside Rs 100 crore for the scheme.
Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia, who also holds the Education portfolio, said the AAP government considers expenditure on education not an expense but an “investment”.
In his first budget, Sisodia had doubled the plan allocation for education. The total amount earmarked for the sector this year is 8.68 percent more than last year’s Rs 9,836 crore. The plan outlay pegged at Rs 4,645 crore is 23 percent of total plan outlay and the highest among all the heads.
The major focus for this year is on the training and capacity building of teachers. They are to be imparted high quality training for their professional development and will be sent to some of the best universities in the world like Harvard, Cambridge and Oxford. For this, Rs 102 crore has been earmarked in 2016-17 as against Rs 9.4 crore in 2015-16.Manish Sisodia, Delhi Deputy CM
He said 21 new school buildings have been constructed while 8,000 classrooms are being built in the existing government schools which would “probably” be available for use from July onwards.
“This effectively means that the infrastructure equivalent to 200 new schools has been added to our government schools,” Sisodia said explaining the “three-fold approach” of AAP towards education.
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