Education

Samagra Shiksha Now Allocates More To Quality, Gender & Equity

The reduction in support for teacher salaries has shifted focus to access, retention, quality, gender and equity.

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Samagra Shiksha Exploration

Quality Interventions Now Get the Largest Share Under Samagra Shiksha

Stacked bar plot showing the change in share of allocation to different components under Samagra Shiksha between 2018-19 and 2025-26.

Proportion for each component calculated as amount recommended by PAB for that component divided by total amount recommended by PAB in that year. Other Components includes Inclusive Education, Monitoring of the Scheme, Program Management, RTE Entitlements, and Sports & Physical Education.

Source: PAB Minutes, DoSEL

Rough Copy by thatgurjot

We know a few things about Samagra Shiksha. Over the last eight years that the scheme has been around,

  1. the total amount proposed by all states and UTs has varied widely between years but the amount approved by the PAB has stayed largely flat;
  2. adjusting for inflation, both the proposed and approved amounts have reduced over the years;
  3. there has been a downward trend in the Union Budget’s outlay for the scheme;
  4. adjusting for inflation, the actual spending under the scheme is flat at best

The money flowing into public education has been reducing for the past decade.

Nonetheless, there is a positive side to it. As of 2025-26, more funds are being allocated for activities focussed on improving quality, access, retention, gender and equity than ever before.

The Ministry of Education has been slowly reducing the central government’s share of teacher salaries from the approvals. The idea being that states should pay a greater share of teacher salaries from the state’s budget, rather than relying on the Samagra Shiksha approvals alone.

Interestingly, this move could reasonably explain why the actual spending under the scheme has been falling. Spending the funds on teacher salaries is arguably the easiest thing to do for a state project office. Whereas infrastructure projects or quality programmes are hard work.

That’s an unintended consequence!

Context: The Samagra Shiksha scheme started in 2018-19 as a consolidated centrally sponsored scheme for providing school education. Each year the scheme’s Project Approval Board (PAB) grants states and UTs a corpus for enhancing the quality of education in government schools. Both states and the PAB have to abide by the scheme’s Financial Management and Procurement Manual in this process. The minutes of these meetings along with the data on the activities, proposals and recommendations is published on the Ministry’s website.