Govt highlights rural education push: Over Rs 34K cr released under ‘Samagra Shiksha’

The Centre informed Parliament on Monday that it released Rs 34,000 crore in the last financial year (2024-25) to fund Samagra Shiksha — a Centrally Sponsored Scheme aimed at ensuring quality education for all children from pre-school to Class 12.

Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said a major push has been made towards digitising classrooms. “As per the PRABANDH portal, to date, 1,76,669 ICT labs and 1,75,936 smart classrooms have been sanctioned to state and union territory governments under this element of ‘Samagra Shiksha’. The programme also includes 200 PM eVidya DTH TV channels and 400 radio channels to enable all States and UTs to provide supplementary education in various Indian languages for classes 1 to 12,” he said.

Pradhan added 13,076 PM SHRI (Pradhan Mantri Schools for Rising India) schools have been selected across 33 states, of which 9,373 are located in rural areas.

Citing the UDISE+ report, the minister highlighted infrastructure improvements in schools between 2019-20 and 2023-24. He said electricity availability rose from 83.4 per cent to 91.8 per cent; library facilities expanded from 76.4 per cent to 89 per cent; access to computers improved from 38.5 per cent to 57.2 per cent; and internet connectivity increased from 22.3 per cent to 53.9 per cent during the same period.

The minister also noted that 12 institutions have been designated as Institutions of Eminence (IoE) so far. These include eight public institutions — namely IIT Bombay, IIT Delhi, IIT Madras, IIT Kharagpur, IISc Bangalore, BHU Varanasi, University of Hyderabad and University of Delhi — and four private institutions: BITS Pilani, Manipal Academy of Higher Education, OP Jindal Global University and Shiv Nadar University, Greater Noida. Funding under the scheme is provided only to public institutions.

Pradhan said Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) in higher education has improved from 23.7 per cent in 2014-15 to 28.4 per cent in 2021-22, with female GER reaching 28.5 per cent.