Budget 2025 LIVE: Education gets Rs 1.28 lakh crore; up by 6.65%; big update for IITs, medical colleges

NEW DELHI: The Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman is presenting the 8th consecutive Union Budget 2025. Included in the education budget plans, as detailed in Sitharamans' budget 2025 speech, is significant expansion of Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) set up in the last decade; 10,000 more medical college seats in the next year; greater support for the mid-day meal scheme (PM Poshan) and research.

The exact allocations to higher and school education are still awaited. While the education sector still dreams of 6% of GDP allocation to the public education system, academics and experts have pushed for AI integration in school and college education. To that end, a new Centre of Excellence on AI in Education has been allocated Rs 500 crore in the financial year. Track Nirmala Sitharaman's budget speech and highlights on school and higher education budget here; her speech is being webcast live on indiabudget.gov.in.

While the expectations on income tax reforms are high, increased budget outlay for education is also highly anticipated. The education budget 2025 is expected to emphasize on job creation to address the unemployment rate in India. Academics have also demanded for increasing upskilling courses along with introducing artificial intelligence (AI) courses in schools and universities .

A day before the Union Budget 2025, Nirmala Sitharaman tabled the Economic Survey 2024-25 in the Parliament. The survey revealed that the school dropout rates have steadily declined with primary dropout rates at 1.9%, upper primary at 5.2%, and secondary at 14.1%.

Education Budget 2025 for school, higher education

For the current fiscal year (2024-25), the government had allocated a record Rs 1.20 lakh crore to the education sector , marking a 6.84% increase from the previous year’s budget estimate.

Of the total budget outlay announced for the education sector - Rs 1,20,627.87 crore - school education was allocated Rs 73,008.10 crore and higher education was allocated Rs 47,619.77 crore. India's school education system serves 24.8 crore students across 14.72 lakh schools with 98 lakh teachers, as per the UDISE+ 2023-24.

Budget allocation for schools education saw a marginal increase of 6.11%, of which a massive amount of Rs 4,200 crore increase has been claimed by the PM SHRI. Higher education on the other hand saw a 7.4% increase in the allocation compared to the previous year.