Financing Education / pdf - Unesco

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PROGRESS IN FINANCING EDUCATION FOR ALL Changing national financial commitments to EFA since Dakar Some clear patterns emerge across the different income groups. Low-income countries, on average, devote almost half their total education expenditure to primary education. This share falls as income rises, to just 25% in high income countries. The average share for secondary education is lowest in low-income countries (28%) and broadly similar in the other three income groups (between 34% and 40%). There is little variation in the average share for tertiary education for the three low and middle income groups (16% to 20%); the share is somewhat higher (22%) for high income countries. Turning to the distribution of expenditure among the education levels within each group, in high income countries and, to a lesser extent, in upper middle income countries, secondary education receives the highest priority. In lower middle income countries, the average share for secondary is slightly below that for primary, while in lowincome countries the primary share is much higher than that of secondary education. As the pressure to expand secondary school enrolment intensifies in today’s low income countries, so will the competition with primary education for increases in the education budget. Once again, among countries in each income group there are significant differences. In the low-income group the share of primary education in total public expenditure on education varies from 17% in the Republic of Moldova to 71% in Burkina Faso. Among lower middle income countries the range is from 9% in Belarus to 65% in the Dominican Republic. The variation is less for high income countries. Tertiary education’s share in total expenditure also varies substantially. Among lowincome countries, Mauritania devotes 5% of its total expenditure on education to tertiary while in Eritrea the share reaches 48%. The distribution across education levels partly reflects the distribution of pupils, but the heterogeneity also indicates the extent to which countries vary in the way they use private and public sources to finance the different levels of education. The greater emphasis on primary education in low-income countries has an interesting effect on expenditure as a share of GNP. While sixteen countries in sub-Saharan Africa spend more than 1.8% of GNP on primary education, no country except Iceland in North America or Western Europe spends above this share. This is another indication of the efforts many poor countries are making to move towards the EFA goals. Figure 4.3: Average shares of public current expenditure on education by level, by income group, 2005 Share in public current expenditure on education (%) 100 80 60 40 20 0 High income countries Upper middle income countries Sources: Annex, Statistical Table 11; UIS database. Lower middle income countries Information on changes in the share of total public education expenditure going to primary education between 1999 and 2005 is limited to twenty-six countries, leaving aside North America and Western Europe. The share remained constant in one of these, increased in nine and fell in sixteen. However, the annual rate of growth of real expenditure was negative in only three of the sixteen: Argentina (-1.5%), Saint Lucia (-5.2%) and the Congo (-11.8%). The highest growth rates were in Burundi (15.0%), Bolivia (9.7%), Morocco (8.6%), Bangladesh (7.5%) and Nepal (7.3%). Overall, expenditure on primary education grew in most of the countries in this relatively small group, but at a lower rate than expenditure on other levels. As a result, the share of total education expenditure for primary education decreased in several countries. Public expenditure per primary school pupil: big differences within regions Average annual public expenditure on each primary school pupil varies enormously across countries. Since, typically, between 85% and 95% of the expenditure is for teacher salaries, and since much of the variation in these salaries reflects differences in per capita income, little can be learned from a straightforward comparison of expenditure per pupil by country. As a result, the common approach to comparing this ‘unit cost’ among countries is to present it as a share of each country’s per capita GNP. Table 4.4 summarizes the 2005 data for 107 countries. The differences among regions are relatively small. Of greater interest are the Low income countries Level unspecified Tertiary Secondary Primary Pre-primary The share of primary education in total public expenditure on education varies from 17% in the Republic of Moldova to 71% in Burkina Faso 147
0 2 0 8 CHAPTER 4 Education for All Global Monitoring Report Education expenditure has increased significantly in most countries since 1999 Table 4.4: Public current expenditure on primary education per pupil as % of GNP per capita in selected countries, by region, 2005 Median Average Maximum Minimum Number of countries Sub-Saharan Africa Source: Annex, Statistical Table 11. Arab States Central Asia 12.4 12.3 8.0 13.3 8.7 13.5 20.1 16.9 13.3 15.6 9.1 12.3 10.3 13.5 19.9 17.2 33.4 45.1 13.2 20.6 18.5 23.9 24.9 24.2 4.7 6.6 7.1 2.5 5.2 5.0 14.4 11.7 26 12 4 9 4 21 19 12 differences between countries in a given region. For example, in sub-Saharan Africa the median is 12.4%, but Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cape Verde, Kenya and Namibia each has a unit public cost of at least half as much again. Differences may be due to a variety of factors, including a relatively small pupil/teacher ratio, high teacher salaries compared to the rest of the workforce and relatively high costs of providing other inputs to schools. Any of these can put additional strain on financing primary education. Another factor may be differences in the amounts households are required to contribute. How has real expenditure per primary-school pupil changed over the past few years as countries expanded their education systems? The two main factors are changes in total expenditure on primary education and in numbers of pupils. Of particular interest is whether countries have been able to maintain the level of expenditure per pupil as enrolments have increased since 1999 and, where enrolment has decreased (generally for demographic reasons), whether countries have taken the opportunity to increase per-pupil expenditure. Information is available for twentyfour countries outside North America and Europe. In almost all these cases, per-pupil expenditure rose and for almost half of the countries this was because increases in total expenditure were greater than increases in enrolment. In some countries, largely upper middle income, the increase was due to growth in total expenditure and a decline in enrolment. Only in four countries did per-pupil expenditure fall: in Argentina and Saint Lucia due to a larger reduction in expenditure than in enrolment, in the Congo to a high increase in enrolment while public expenditure fell and in Namibia to an increase in enrolment while spending was unchanged. East Asia/ Pacific South/West Asia Latin America/ Caribbean N. America/ W. Europe Centr./East. Europe It is very likely that the Congo was not the only country where enrolment rose faster than expenditure. The increase in the average pupil/teacher ratio across sub-Saharan Africa from 41:1 in 1999 to 45:1 in 2005, described in Chapter 2, suggests similar rises for many countries. How equitable is government expenditure on education? Education expenditure has increased significantly in most countries since 1999. Yet how equitable is its distribution? In some countries, all government expenditure on education is classified as poverty reducing while in others that classification is limited to expenditure on primary education. For most lowincome countries, the arguments for including only primary education are stronger, since expenditure at this level is more direct in enabling poor children eventually to move out of poverty. In countries where secondary and tertiary education enrolment is still highly restricted, children from higher income households tend to dominate, and to benefit overwhelmingly from government expenditure. Benefit incidence studies analyse the benefits of government expenditure on education across household income groups and have been summarized for thirty-seven countries (Davoodi et al., 2003). Table 4.5 shows the shares of education expenditure, in total and by education level, spent on the poorest and wealthiest quintiles of households in five geographical country groupings. In all cases, the studies used data from the 1990s. Total expenditure on education was not pro-poor in any of the country groupings, and particularly not in sub-Saharan Africa or Asia and the Pacific. In all cases the pro-rich bias of expenditure on secondary and, particularly, tertiary education counterbalanced the generally pro-poor expenditure on primary education. In sub-Saharan 148
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Financing Education / pdf - Unesco

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