As per a study conducted by Child Rights and you (CRY), Bihar spends 17.7 percent of its total budget on school education which is 5.6 percent of its gross state domestic product. Its school education budget is higher than the national average of 2.7 percent of the GDP, according to a study by a leading NGO. According to the study conducted by CRY, the national average remained same in the time period from 2012-13 to 2015-16. A detailed study of school budget had been conducted by CRY in association with Centre of Budgets, Governance and Accountability (CGBA) which included the school budget scenarios of 10 states viz. Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, UP, Jharkhand and Karnataka. It was found that Bihar spends 17.7 percent of its total budget on school education. It is in a close competition with Maharashtra which spends 18 percent of its budget on the same. However because of Bihar’s smaller budget size as compared to other states, 17.7 percent of budget allocation in school education is not sufficient, as said by Mohua Chatterjee, Program Head of CRY.
It is also reported that the state spends 1.6 percent of its school education budget on teacher’s training while in other states it varies from .2 percent to .6 percent. However the state spends only Rs 9,583 per student which is very less as compared to Rs 32, 263 per student spent by Kendriya Vidyalayas across the nation.
Bihar is still lagging behind on per student spending by states like Goa, Kerala Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. It still faces the problems like teacher shortage, under developed infrastructure, inspection and monitoring of schools etc and needs money to tackle the same.