spending on education as a share of the central governments total budgeted expenditure has been falling for the past three years compared to 201314 the last year of upa when education got 457 of the total expenditure there has been a steady decline 365 in 201617 according to this budgets revised estimate with the estimated outlay for the coming year showing a minor uptick at 371looking at education spend as a share of the gdp which is what international trackers do the trend is clear having dipped from 063 of the gdp in 201314 to 047 projected by the government for 201718although budgeted expenditure for the ministry of human resource development mhrd has been increased over the previous year by about 8 this is illusory because inflation of about 56 would neutralise most of itsince 201617 the government has rejigged the sharing pattern of central schemes in key sectors including secondary and higher education with lower outlays in the budget and more direct transfers in keeping with the 14th finance commissions recommendationthis would have marginally contributed to a decline in the total education outlay as allocation for two schemes concerning secondary and higher education the rashtriya madhyamik shiksha abhiyan and the rashtriya uchchtar shiksha abhiyan was about 7 of the total education outlay in 201516 the last year before new sharing patternthese are not mere numbers their importance for india lies in that public spending on education is a must for making it available for all and in better quality while government policymakers since upas times have been congratulating themselves for bringing almost all the children aged 613 years to elementary school little attention has been paid to the fact that after this stage it is downhill all the way gross enrolment ratios number of students in school at a particular stage as a percentage of all children in the concerned age group rapidly deteriorate after elementary school going down to just 54 by senior secondary level in other words roughly half the children are out of school by the time they are senior school age this works out to about 35 million kids out of schoolin higher education the situation is much worse with an enrolment ratio of just 24 for the 1823 age group this includes distance education studentsin most advanced countries the ratio is close to the 50 mark so about 71million youth are still out of the higher education system enrolment ratios are lower for dalits and adivasis and dropout rates higher so they need to be reached out to especially in remote areas school infrastructure and teachers need to be provided for ngos and corporate bodies cant handle this but the government has made an increase of only 4 for the sarva shiksha abhiyanthe problem does not end here even after getting everybody into school and college theres need for good qualified teachers at present there are about 86 million school teachers and 15 million higher education teachers in the country