Date:22/09/2004 URL: http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2004/09/22/stories/2004092202241700.htm

Back Time-frame to reform grant-in-aid system planned in Karnataka

Our Bureau

Bangalore , Sept. 21

THE Government has evolved a protocol to implement the grant-in-aid reforms and rationalisation and monitoring system for the private-aided schools.

A cap has been fixed in terms of number of years before embarking upon phasing out of the system.

Education sector faces serious fund crunch because the requirements far outstrip availability. This problem has been compounded by subsidies given in the form of grant-in-aid (GIA) to private institutions.

With 35 per cent of the funds allocated for government salary expenditure in education, it only helps in covering 24 per cent of the total number of students who go to government institutions.

The revamp and rationalisation of the GIA system, though announced during the Budgets every year from 2000-01 had yet to be implemented, said a document on Medium Term Fiscal Plan (MTFP).

MTFP aims at reducing the fiscal deficit, which debilitates the budgetary exercise to make more effective deployment of funds for key social infrastructure such as education and health.

"The dependence on assistance by way of GIA should be replaced by a model that helps private institutions ultimately achieving self-sustenance so that new institutions in uncovered areas could be admitted to GIA," said the document.

With this objective in view, MTFP document states that a time-frame for extending GIA has been planned under which, block periods of 15, 20 and 30 years from the induction into GIA would be fixed for technical, collegiate and primary and secondary level educational institutions, respectively.

During the period the institutions would receive grants as capped at 2002-03 levels and thereafter, a phase out in corresponding block periods would be enforced.