The Andhra Pradesh state Budget for 2024-25 has allocated Rs 29,909 crore and Rs 2,326 crore for school education and higher education. While the school education budget has remained nearly the same compared to the last year’s Budget under the previous YSRCP government, the higher education budget saw an increase of about 13%.  

Last year, the Budget Estimate (2023-24) for school education and higher education was Rs 29,691 crore and Rs 2,065 crore respectively. The Revised Estimate (2023-24), however, was Rs 28,382 crore and Rs 2,233 crore for these two departments. 

In other words, there has been an increase of Rs 219 crore (0.74%) in funds allocated to the school education department, and Rs 262 crore in the higher education department budget (12.69%), compared to the previous year.  

This is the first budget introduced in Andhra Pradesh under the NDA alliance comprising the Telugu Desam Party, Jana Sena Party and Bharatiya Janata Party, which came to power in June 2024.The education portfolio is held by the state Human Resource Development (HRD) minister Nara Lokesh. Lokesh, also the son of Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu, is the general secretary of the TDP. He has been heavily focused on critiquing the previous YSRCP government for its alleged failure in ensuring quality education. 

“As part of the Swarna Andhra 2024 (Golden Andhra vision), our government is taking initiatives to strengthen schools and universities. Aside from our Super Six promise of providing financial assistance through Thalliki Vandanam (Salute to the Mother), we also ensured the introduction of the Mega DSC recruitment to fill 16,347 vacant teacher posts,” Finance Minister Payyavula Keshav said. 

Under the Thalliki Vandanam scheme, mothers of school-going children have been promised an annual financial assistance of Rs 15,000, similar to the previous YSRCP government’s Amma Vodi scheme. 

In their first Assembly session, the legislators of the ruling alliance focused heavily on irregularities in the education sector and raised questions about the ‘Mana Badi Nadu Nedu’ scheme launched by YSRCP in November 2019. The scheme aimed to improve learning outcomes, decrease dropout rate in all schools and upgrade school infrastructure. It included the construction of new classrooms, toilets, libraries, and drinking water facilities.

The Jagan-led government was also criticised for “not doing enough to improve Industrial Training Institutes (ITI) and Polytechnic institutions in the state.” On of the major moves of the present government in the education sector has been scrapping the tablets distributed in schools by ed-tech company Byjus, a deal struck up by the previous YSRCP government. 

“At present, the government is re-examining the entire education model, and there is no plan to further procure tablets with Byju’s content. We are redesigning the pedagogy, which will include computer labs with Personalised Adaptive Learning (PAL) methodology in schools,” AP Education Secretary Kona Sasidhar had previously told TNM.

Also Read: Andhra Pradesh government will not be procuring any more Byju’s tablets

The funds allocated to Skill Development and Training also went up in this year’s Budget by about 4%. This years allocation of Rs 1,216 crore is about Rs 49 crore more than the Budget Estimate (2023-24) of Rs 1,167 crore. The Revised Estimate (2023-24) for Skill Development and Training, however, was Rs 892 crore.