By Sivaramakrishnan V.

New Delhi, Jul 2 (IANS): The Union budget is coming up with the proposed New Education Policy (currently at draft stage) in the background and hence allocation towards education will be closely watched. We think this the budget should draw from the point made in the NEP on achieving "foundational literacy and numeracy" by 2025.

It will be worthy to tie-in early digital literacy with this effort and therefore allocation towards 'ICT in Education' during primary schooling should be strongly considered.

Another area of focus should be the Continuous Professional Development (CPD) of teachers with its delivery through the Public Private Partnership (PPP) model. Budget allocation combined with minimum mandatory hours of CPD will help to upskill our large educator community.

Previous budgets have focused on skilling and vocational streams, and as an extension, the government must have an outlay for English language teaching, so that the employability quotient of our young workforce goes up. This has the potential to directly impact the country's GDP.

Education, being on the concurrent list, is a subject of interest to states as well and hence any new initiative must fit in well with the agenda that the respective state Departments of Education have to carry forward.