Financing Education / pdf - Unesco

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PROGRESS IN FINANCING EDUCATION FOR ALL Changing national financial commitments to EFA since Dakar Table 4.5: Distribution of benefits of public spending on education to poorest and richest households in selected countries All education Primary Secondary Tertiary Sub-Saharan Africa (10 countries) Asia and Pacific (4 countries) Middle East and North Africa (2 countries) Transition countries (7 countries) Poorest 20% Richest 20% Poorest 20% Richest 20% Poorest 20% Richest 20% Poorest 20% Richest 20% 12.8 32.7 17.8 18.4 7.4 38.7 5.2 54.4 12.4 34.8 20.3 16.9 8.3 37.3 2.5 69.0 15.3 24.1 24.7 12.4 11.0 24.4 4.0 46.9 15.3 24.0 19.3 20.0 12.5 24.6 8.7 32.6 Source: Davoodi et al. (2003), Table 2. Africa and in the transition country group there was no pro-poor bias even in primary education (Davoodi et al., 2003). As primary education has expanded in recent years, it is likely that the poor have been benefiting increasingly and that expenditure on this level is increasingly pro-poor. This is the case in several sub-Saharan African countries where access has expanded significantly since school fees were abolished. A recent study of Ethiopia analysed the share of benefits from public education expenditure by household wealth, region, location (urban/rural) and gender in 1996, 1998 and 2000 (Woldehanna and Jones, 2006). In all cases, the disparities in the incidence of expenditure decreased. In 1996, only around 12% of expenditure on primary education benefited the poorest one-fifth of rural households, but by 2000 the share had increased to 18%. For the wealthiest fifth, the share fell from 24% to 18%. Similarly, between 1998 and 2000 the share of total primary education expenditure benefiting girls increased from 36.5% to 39.7% – and within that overall increase, the share for the poorest girls increased most. These changes coincided with implementation of the first sector-wide programme in education and consequent expansion of primary schooling. It is likely that disparities have since decreased further, as the GER rose from 59% in 1999 to 100% in 2006 and the share of education in total government expenditure rose from 14% to 18%, with primary education being allocated a constant share. Disparities in education expenditure across regions, linked to disparities in educational provision and attainment, are often widest in large countries and, especially, in those with federal structures, where the individual regional governments that have responsibility for services such as education have access to differing levels of resources. Across the world, arrangements for compensating relatively underdeveloped and under-resourced regions vary, and change periodically as circumstances change. In recent years some countries have made specific responses with regard to expanding basic education. In India since 1994 and in Nigeria since 2005 the focus has been on federal grants to states, in South Africa on increases in the shares of total revenue that are allocated to the poorest regions (Crouch, 2004) and in Brazil on federal supplements to state education funds, themselves financed through minimum shares of state and municipal government revenue (Gordon and Vegas, 2005). Household expenditure on education Though the Dakar Framework commits governments and donors to provide the resources necessary to achieve EFA and calls for creative and sustained mobilization of resources from other parts of society, including the private sector and NGOs, the reality is that households also make substantial contributions to the education system. 5 The first part of this section looks at how much and on what items, and what impact this has on households, particularly poor ones. Efforts to reduce or offset household expenditure have been made over the past few years in attempts to expand poor children’s access to school. These efforts, and their implications for public expenditure, are discussed in the second part. Households account for a significant portion of total expenditure at all levels of education Figure 4.4 illustrates the extent of household participation in education financing, through fees and other direct payments, for a group of eleven low and middle income countries participating in the World <strong>Education</strong> Indicators (WEI) programme 6 as well as for twenty-eight OECD countries. Household payments of school-related charges in nine of the eleven countries represent more than The reality is that households make substantial contributions to the education system 5. Comparing household expenditure on education by country is challenging, given the diverse ways in which governments define the components of education spending and the varied sources available for the analysis. It is even more difficult to find comparable data across time. This discussion draws on a variety of sources, in particular data systematized by international agencies and primary and secondary analyses of household surveys; all data should be regarded as rough approximations. 6. The WEI programme is a joint UIS-OECD collaboration, currently involving nineteen developing countries. 149
0 2 0 8 CHAPTER 4 <strong>Education</strong> for All Global Monitoring Report Figure 4.4: Relative proportions of public, household and other private expenditure on education institutions Jordan Uruguay Argentina Thailand Peru India Paraguay Indonesia Philippines Chile Jamaica Germany Sweden Turkey Norway Portugal Finland Austria Czech Republic Hungary Denmark Belgium Greece Netherlands Italy Ireland France Slovakia Iceland Canada Spain Poland United Kingdom New Zealand Mexico Australia United States Japan Republic of Korea 7. Expenditure on education institutions includes payments for instruction and provision of education goods by institutions, capital expenditure and rent, provision of ancillary services, and research and development activities (UIS, 2006a). 8. Direct public funding of private schools represents almost 40% of total public expenditure on primary and secondary education in Chile (UIS, 2006a). In addition to receiving vouchers, government-supported private schools are allowed to charge tuition fees. WEI countries OECD countries 0 20 40 60 80 100 Households % of total expenditure on education institutions Public Private non-households Note: Data correspond to the financial year ending in 2003, except for Canada, Jordan and Uruguay (2002), Chile, New Zealand and Peru (2004) and Thailand (2005). Source: UIS (2006a), Table 2.b.i. one-quarter of total expenditure on education institutions. 7 In Chile and Jamaica the household share exceeds 40%, and there is evidence that it has been rising in Argentina, Chile, India, Jamaica and Thailand. The share of private spending is reported to have increased sevenfold in India between 1998 and 2003, to 27%, and by 4.5 times in Thailand between 2000 and 2005, to 24.5%. The combined share of household and other private sources in Jamaica, already 38% in 2000, grew to 47% in three years (UIS, 2006a; UIS/OECD, 2003). Funding arrangements for the different levels of education vary by country. In Jamaica, households mainly pay for public and private non-tertiary institutions. In Chile, by contrast, a considerable proportion of expenditure on tertiary education is paid for by households, while public funding covers most of the cost of primary and secondary education through vouchers, even for private institutions (UIS, 2006a). 8 At the other end of the spectrum, Jordan and Uruguay rely heavily on public financing for all levels, with average government participation in total funding that is above even the OECD mean. In general, governments in developing countries tend to fund a much greater share of primary and secondary education than of tertiary. Exceptions are India, Jamaica and Thailand, where public sources cover over two-thirds of total financing for tertiary. It is worth noting, though, from an EFA perspective, that households still contribute around 20% of total expenditure at these levels. Overall reliance on public sources to finance education is greater in OECD countries, with their larger tax base, than in WEI countries. In Denmark, Finland, Norway, Portugal, Sweden and Turkey, public funding provides over 95% of total expenditure, and in twenty-two of the twenty-eight OECD countries covered, public funding for all nontertiary education is at least 90% of the total. Another way of assessing the extent of household participation in the financing of education is to compare the amounts spent per public school pupil by households and by the government. This comparison is shown for primary schools in eight countries in Figure 4.5. While in most of these cases governments cover the majority of the direct cost of educating a child, households contribute up to one-quarter of the total. Tuition fees in public primary schools are common, as are other types of private costs Many countries tolerate the collection of fees and charges in public primary schools despite constitutional provisions guaranteeing free primary education. Indeed, most children enrolled in public primary schools face some type of charges. Table 4.6 provides examples of the prevalence of several categories of household expenditure for public primary schooling in nine countries. A large percentage of households pay tuition and examination charges in some countries: above 80% in Guatemala and Panama, around 70% in 150
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Financing Education / pdf - Unesco

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