Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented the Union Budget in Parliament on Wednesday, February 1. This was Sitharaman’s 5th, and the Modi Government 2.0’s last Union Budget before the 2024 Lok Sabha Elections. In terms of the Education Sector, the Budget 2023 allotted the highest ever package to the Education Ministry with Rs 1.12 lakh crore.
The education budget 2023 also saw a rise in school education and higher education allocation. Besides increased education expenditure for FY 2023-24, the education budget also proposed several new schemes and initiatives to boost quality education and upskilling in the country, like new nursing colleges, new Skill India centres, ICMR labs, recruitment of teachers, and others. Soon after the Education Budget 2023 announcement, industry experts were quick to welcome the announced allocations and its propositions. Given below are the reactions of some industry experts to the Education Budget 2023:
Anish Srikrishnan, CEO, Timespro
The budget has ushered a slew of initiatives by emphasising the National Education Policy’s skilling outlook. We welcome the move and expect public-private cooperation to meet the goals of this initiative, accelerating India’s transition to an Industry 4.0 economy. The three AI centres of excellence to enable ‘Make AI for India’ and ‘Make AI work for India’ will benefit the development of digital infrastructure and skills in India. At a time when skilling and reskilling are critical for India’s youth, the government’s recognition of the need for skilling is an encouraging move for the Higher Education and H.EdTech sectors. However, we continue to believe that lowering the GST on professional learning programmes would have made modern learning more accessible and affordable, assisting millions of learners in becoming future-ready.
Lejo Sam Oommen, MD, ETS India
The Union Budget has provided an excellent roadmap for upskilling of youth in the country – this will provide impetus to growth and job creation for India’s young demographic. The decision to set up 30 Skill India International Centres across different states have the potential to meet the human resource needs of not just India but also global markets. Likewise, the apprenticeship scheme that will benefit 4.7 million youth could also support resourcing in global markets. This budget truly paves the way for internationalization of not just education but also India’s skilling prowess.
Ratnesh Jha, CEO, Burlington Group
The Union budget of this year is positioned to take India to the world in the “Amrit kaal”. The Hon’ble FM has rightly laid out the longer-term vision for technology-driven and knowledge-based economy with schemes such as PM Kaushal Vikas Yojana 4.0 designed to upskill youth and make them employable. Our young population will need the right set of language and soft skills along with tech exposure to meet the growing demands of the industry, and budget 2023 lays a perfect foundation to enable that.
Roopali Mehra, Founder, MyTransform
This is a completely career-oriented budget where the focus is not just on skilling through initiatives such as PMKVY 4.0 but also on getting our learners ready for Industry 4.0 with new-age courses in Coding, AI, IOT, Mechatronics, Drones and others. Learners will have the option to look beyond traditional career choices and make informed career decisions. She welcomed the Government stance on ‘janbhagidari’ through ‘sabka saath, sabka prayaas’ that endeavours to build a public-private-partnership model in skilling and career development.
Tarun Arora, CEO, Knimbus
The creation of a digital learning ecosystem will break barriers of access and also cost to a large degree. The Government’s focus on creating a culture of reading and strong focus on non-curricular learning material will accentuate India’s status as a knowledge economy. Digital Knowledge repositories will help HEIs to raise their standards of learning, as also support research in emerging areas such as Agri-tech, AI, Data science and IoT towards building an industry ready workforce.
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