Financing Education / pdf - Unesco

PROGRESS IN FINANCING EDUCATION FOR ALL
Changing national financial commitments to EFA since Dakar
that, over the long term, as countries’ economies
grow, a larger share of their GNP might be
expected to be devoted to education.
Education expenditure as a share
of total government expenditure
can measure commitment
The share of education expenditure in GNP is a
result of several factors, including governments’
ability to collect domestic revenue, which is harder
to do in low-income countries. Having a relatively
small share of education expenditure in GNP
does not necessarily mean education is a low
government priority; it may mean the public
sector is small. Thus, education’s share of total
government expenditure is a more direct measure
of governments’ relative commitment to education,
at least as compared to other sectors and areas
of expenditure.
Data on the share of education in total government
expenditure in 2005 are available for 107 countries,
including twenty from North America and Western
Europe, and summarized in the lower half of
Table 4.1. The relatively few countries in the Arab
States region for which data are available tend to
devote a significantly higher proportion of total
government expenditure to education than do
countries in other regions. The region with the next
highest median is Central Asia, at 18%, then sub-
Saharan Africa at 17.5%. 3 East Asia and the Pacific,
Latin America and the Caribbean, and South and
West Asia have median shares between 15% and
13%. Again, variations across countries in each
of these regions are large. North America and
Western Europe, which devotes the highest share
of GNP to education, also records the lowest share
of total public expenditure (below 13%).
Turning from regions to countries, six of the eight
Arab States for which there is information allocated
at least 20% of total government expenditure to
basic education, as did five of twenty-one sub-
Saharan African countries: Botswana, Cape Verde,
Kenya, Lesotho and Madagascar. Other countries
in the sample achieving this impressive level were
the Islamic Republic of Iran, Malaysia, Mexico, the
Republic of Moldova and Thailand. Twenty-seven of
the eighty-seven countries remaining after omitting
North America and Western Europe devoted
between 15% and 20%. Seven of these were in
sub-Saharan Africa. At the bottom of the range,
countries allocating less than 10% of total public
expenditure to education were in either sub-
Table 4.2: Total public expenditure on education as % of GNP, by income group, 2005
Median
Maximum
Minimum
Variance
High-income
countries
Upper-middleincome
countries
Total public expenditure on education as % of GNP
5.5 5.6 4.7 3.9
8.5 11.0 9.5 10.8
1.6 2.3 1.0 1.8
5.5 5.7 4.8 4.4
Number of countries with data/number of countries in income group
37/54 22/34 27/47 39/68
Source: Annex, Statistical Table 11.
Saharan Africa (Cameroon, the Congo and
Equatorial Guinea) or Latin America and the
Caribbean (the Dominican Republic, Guatemala,
Jamaica, Panama and Uruguay).
Lower-middleincome
countries
Although richer countries tend to spend a greater
share of GNP on education, there is little difference
across income groups in the share of total
expenditure devoted to education. The average
(and median) is around 16% to 17% for low-income,
lower middle income and upper middle income
countries alike. The share in high income countries
tends to be lower (13%), largely because allocations
for social welfare benefits are larger.
Changes in education expenditure since 1999
are not uniform
How have education expenditure levels changed
since 1999? In particular, to what extent have lowincome
countries increased the share of national
income and budgets allocated to education as
encouraged in the Dakar Framework? Outside North
America and Western Europe, education expenditure
as a share of GNP and of total government
expenditure is available for both 1999 and 2005 for
only eighty-four and forty countries, respectively.
The evidence on the change in education’s share of
GNP between 1999 and 2005 is mixed (Figure 4.1).
In the Arab States, the share increased in four of the
six countries for which information is available. The
exceptions were Saudi Arabia, which nevertheless
allocated a very high 6.7% in 2005, and Mauritania,
where the share fell to only 2.4%. The share also
increased in seven out of twelve countries in East
Asia and the Pacific, and remained high even in
those countries where it fell, with the Marshall
Islands at 9.5%, Tonga 4.9% and Thailand 4.3%.
Across sub-Saharan Africa changes were positive,
on the whole. The share of education expenditure
Low-income
countries
The evidence
on the change in
education’s share
of GNP between
1999 and 2005
is mixed
3. It should be noted that the
proportion of countries with
data available varies by
region, and that Central Asia,
the Arab States, and East
Asia and the Pacific are the
regions with the smallest
proportions for this indicator.
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