Budget allocations for education include increase in Mahapola, bursary
View(s):The National People’s Power (NPP) government’s Budget 2025 allocations for the education sector include allocations to improve pre-school, primary and secondary school education, as well as university education. There are also allocations to expand the school meal programmme and enhance scholarship benefits.
Some of the allocations announced by President Anura Dissanayake during Monday’s Budget speech include Rs 10 billion to upgrade school infrastructure and Rs 135 billion to improve the quality of the university system.
The government proposes to increase the payment per student for pre-school morning meal programme from Rs 60 to Rs 100. A provision of Rs 1,000 million has already been made in the budget estimate for this purpose. The government also proposes to increase the monthly allowance of pre-school teachers to Rs 1,000 starting from June this year, with Rs 100 million allocated for the purpose.
The government’s policy is to develop a primary school within a 3 kilometre radius of children’s residence or their parents’ place of work, the president noted. “At present, there are 10,126 government schools island wide. Of them, 3,946 are primary schools, and approximately 634,094 children enrolled in these schools. There are more than 3,000 schools having fewer than 100 students, 1,471 schools have fewer than 50 students. Most of these schools are in rural and remote areas. This has led to a great disparity between schools. Accordingly, it is proposed to review the school system to prepare a national plan to relocate schools. Accordingly, we propose to allocate Rs 500 million to implement this programme,” the president added.
Meanwhile, the government proposes to increase the monthly scholarship amount from Rs 750 to Rs 1,500 to students who qualified from the Grade 5 scholarship examination in low-income families. The government proposes to allocate Rs 1,000 million for this purpose.
Another proposal is to double the monthly nutritious food allowance for students in sports schools from Rs 5,000 to Rs 10,000 per student, while the government also aims to increase this stipend from Rs 4,000 to Rs 5,000 per month for students in vocational education.
In universities, the government proposes to increase the monthly Mahapola scholarship from Rs 5,000 to Rs 7,500 and monthly bursary from 4,000 to Rs 6,500. A provision of Rs 4,600 million has been made in the budget.
All of these payments will be made from April, President Dissanayake told Parliament. (SJ)
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