Do Schools Get Their Money? PAISA 2012

The PAISA 2012 report is based on the PAISA surveys conducted through the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) that covered more than 14,000 schools across rural India in 2010, 2011 and 2012. Information was collected through citizen-led surveys making PAISA the first and only national level, citizen-led effort to track public expenditure in education.This PAISA report, for the first time, provides total allocation, and per student allocation toward elementary education. Total allocation includes allocation from the state treasuries as well as Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan (SSA). PAISA's specific point of investigation is the school grants in SSA. Every government school in India receives three grants annually - School Maintenance Grant (SMG), School Development Grant (SDG) and Teaching Learning Material (TLM) Grant. These grants constituted 5% of total SSA allocation in 2010-11. Though small in amount, these grants are extremely crucial for the daily functioning of a school, and represent the only money available over which the school has some control. PAISA 2012 report describes trends in these grants over a period of three years starting from 2009-10 or 2010-11 depending on the question being analyzed.The PAISA survey focuses on the following key questions concerning these grants: Do schools get their money? Does money reach on time? Do schools get all their money? Do schools spend their money? How do they spend their money?PAISA 2012 also reports overall trends in SSA allocation and expenditure from 2010-11 to 2012-13, to help contextualize school level expenditure. The data have been painstakingly collected for each state and Union Territory (UT) using publicly available sources