Education budget utilisation has improved since Covid pandemic: Government data

Utilisation of the education budget has improved significantly since the Covid-19 pandemic, shows actual expenditure data the education ministry shared with Rajya Sabha in the winter session of parliament.

The education ministry spent over 91% of its budget for the financial year 2024-25, Rs 1,10,477.28 crore . While this is a drop from the utilisation level of 2023-24, which was around 98.7%, it is a significant improvement over the pandemic years of 2020-21 and 2022-23 when it hovered around the 85% mark. At 84.5%, it was lowest in 2020-21.

Tracing just the actual expenditure on education, it has risen by 20.9% from 2019-20 to 2024-25. The minister of state for education, Sukanta Majumdar, shared the data in response to a question raised by All Indian Trinamool Congress MP from West Bengal, Dola Sen.

What education ministry spent

Source: Education ministry’s reply to parliament question, winter session, 2025

India’s education budget 4.1% of GDP

The same response also reports that the “public expenditure (central and states) on education in India has increased from 3.84% of GDP in 2013-14 to 4.12% of GDP in 2021-22”. However, this is still far below the 6% of GDP, promised at every election and reasonable when considered against spending by other developing countries. It also does not account for the massive reform project the government has undertaken with the National Education Policy 2020.

Majumdar’s response also states that the government has increased expenditures on its flagship schemes, PM Schools for Rising India (PM SHRI) and Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan, that have gone up by 23.96% and 10%, respectively over previous year.

Revised budgets

The gap between budget and revised estimates have also shrunk over the past few years although the revised outlay has been lower than the initial one in all years but one.

The gap was widest in 2020-21 – Rs 14,222.45 crore – with the covid pandemic causing widespread disruptions in education and, therefore, utilisation of budgets. The next two years saw narrower gaps between BE and RE –Rs 5,222.79 crore in 2021-22 and Rs 4,396.59 crore in 2022-23.

In the 2023-24 financial year, RE was slightly higher than the BE but in the last one, ending in 2025, BE was again higher.