Countries including India slashed their education budget after pandemic: Report

NEW DELHI: A report released by the World Bank, in collaboration with UNESCO’s Global Education Monitoring, established that the current levels of government spending on education in low and lower-middle income countries fall short of that required to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. It said that education budgets were cut by 65 per cent in low and lower-middle income countries after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic while only 33 per cent of high and upper-middle income countries did so.

The report was compiled to understand the short-term impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on education budgets. Information was collected from 29 countries across all regions. The sample represents about 54 per cent of the world’s school and university aged population informed the report and said that the information collected was then verified with World Bank country teams.

According to the report, countries including, India, Argentina, Brazil, Pakistan, Egypt, Myanmar, Russia, and Nigeria have education shares below 10 per cent and therefore are likely to have other main financing sources besides budget assigned by their respective central government. It said that it is unclear whether these countries which have seen a decline in their education budget will be able to cover these costs increased during the pandemic in conjunction with the regular increases in funding needed to support school-going and growing population.

The report stated that making a riposte to the COVID-19 crisis will require additional spending in order to have schools compliant with the necessary measures to control the spread of SARS-CoV-2 and to fund programs to make up for the losses students experienced in learning while schools were closed. It commented that notwithstanding the adequate funding needed urgently to allow school systems to reopen safely, about half of the countries in the sample were found to have cut their education budgets. It added that this does not bode well for the future, especially when macroeconomic conditions are expected to worsen.