education investment and commitment: reassessing the international benchmarks

UNESCO INSTITUTE for STATISTICS

Education investment and commitment: Education investment and commitment: reassessing the international benchmarksreassessing the international benchmarks

Albert MotivansUNESCO Institute for Statistics

IWGE 2010, Stockholm7 June 2010


UIS and global education finance dataUIS and global education finance data

The UNESCO Institute for Statistics: Collects national domestic finance data annually Disseminates data three times a year on the UIS Data Centre

which is revised retrospectively based on new GDP estimates Uses and interprets data

• Impact of financial crisis on education budgets (2009)• Financing education in Africa (with Pole de Dakar and IIEP in 2010)

Provides technical assistance/data quality diagnoses • Sustainable reporting of financing data in sub-Saharan Africa

(sector review follow-up)• Data quality assessment framework (DQAF)


The global distribution of The global distribution of education spending, 2007education spending, 2007

United States 726.9 TOTAL 784.1

Arab States (15/20) 88.1

Central/Eastern Europe (18/21)

219.7

Central Asia (7/9) 8.7

Latin America/ Caribbean (35/41)

260.1

South/West Asia (7/9) 153.7

Sub-Saharan Africa (38/45) 53.8

Public education expenditure (billion PPP$)

Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 2010


The investment to educate a childThe investment to educate a child

Czech Rep. 2,508Kuwait 2,618Seychelles 2,803

Estonia 2,896

Poland 3,041 Rep. Korea 3,910 Hungary 3,978

One year of primary school, PPP$



Risks in benchmarking public Risks in benchmarking public education spending education spending

Crude measures of macro-level inputs Missing a big part of the picture where household

contributions are not counted Likewise miss the contributions from local and

regional governments Relying only on relative measures one can lose sight

of absolute needs Missing the underlying story of the conditions that

influence spending/costs


Accounting for national contextsAccounting for national contexts

Overall proportion of and growth rates of the school age population

Coverage of the education system • even by single grades!

The roles of government and societies• Redistributive or direct channel for families

Volume of education provision• years of primary schooling, hours of instruction

Quality of education provision• teaching standards, teaching/learning environment

Efficiency of education provision• repetition, retention and completion


Different levels of capacity and demand Different levels of capacity and demand imply different resource needsimply different resource needs

YemenGambia

AfghanistanUAE

ChadSenegalPNG

MaliEritrea

Cote d'Ivoire

SudanBurkina FasoCAR

Djibouti

Brazil

Sierra Leone

Madagascar

MalawiRwanda

GabonNepal

Equat. Guinea

Belize

Sao TomeCambodia

LesothoGuyana

Guinea

Congo

40

60

80

100

120

140

160

40 60 80 100 120 140 160

Primary school age population (1995=100)

Prim

ary

GER

200

5

declining population increasing population

Russian Fed.

GuatemalaZambia

Group AGroup AGroup BGroup B

Group CGroup C


The traditional benchmarksThe traditional benchmarks Investment/cost

• Per pupil public expenditure (PPP$)• Per pupil public expenditure as a share of GDP per capita

Effort/commitment• Public education expenditure as a share of national

income (GDP) or per capita• Public education expenditure as a share of government

budget (TGE)• Share of education expenditure by source of funds


Investment/costInvestment/cost Per pupil expenditure is calculated as the annual expenditure

(recurrent or total) divided by the number of pupils

Countries range from 2% to 25% and less than PPP$100 to more than PPP$15,000

Often presented as ‘unit costs’ but only represents part of total costs; better described as public investment per pupil

Two complementary measures• Relative (as a % of GDP per capita) allows cross-national comparisons• Absolute measures (in PPP$) allow assessment of its sufficiency


Relative and absolute measures of per primary Relative and absolute measures of per primary pupil public expenditure in SS Africa, 2008pupil public expenditure in SS Africa, 2008


1,386

1,021

806

461

346 314263

162 156 132 110 94 83 81 77 76 75 72 61 51 39

0

400

800

1,200

1,600

Expe

nditu

re in

PPP

$

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

Expe

nditu

re a

s a

% o

f GD

P pe

r cap

itaPPP $% GDP per Capita

Note: -1 data refer to 2007; -2 data refer to 2006 Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics.


Effort/commitment, IEffort/commitment, I

The share of national income (GDP) invested in education – often interpreted as a measure of commitment to education

Countries range from less than 1% to 15%

Often misapplied, e.g., ‘5-6% of GDP should be spent on education’ cited (based on OECD)

Not always a good measure of government ‘effort’ because of differences in duration of schooling, coverage of education and other national contexts


Effort/commitment, IIEffort/commitment, II

• The share of public expenditure invested in education – also interpreted as a measure of commitment to education

• Countries range from less than 10% to 30%

• Closer to commitment in that it represents the actual government budget constraints

• Level highly dependent upon the role of governments and societies; whether governments play a redistributive role or families and communities are more directly responsible for the education of their children


Comparing national ‘effort’ fromComparing national ‘effort’ fromthe perspective of fiscal spacethe perspective of fiscal space

Cuba

Lesotho

Djibouti-1Moldova

Botswana-1

Maldives

Swaziland

Iceland-1

BurundiTunisia-1

Cyprus-1

Timor-Leste

VanuatuTanzania

BarbadosNorway-1

Sweden-1

Kyrgyzstan-1Namibia

Israel-1

Belgium-1Guyana-1

Saudi Arabia

Cape Verde

Morocco

USA-1

Ethiopia-1

Samoa

Austria-1

Viet NamUkraine-1

Yemen

Belarus-1

South Africa

Senegal**

Belize-1

Costa Rica

Latvia-1

Poland-1

Thailand

Dominica

Côte d'IvoireBurkina Faso-1

Malaysia-1

Romania-1Spain-1

Italy-1

Algeria

Bulgaria-1

Rwanda

Paraguay-1

Colombia

MaliNepal

Egypt

Togo-1

El Salvador

Slovakia-1Anguilla

TajikistanHong Kong SAR

Bahrain

Georgia

Pakistan

CameroonMadagascar

SingaporeLiberia

Peru

Philippines-1BangladeshLao PDR

Macao, China

Lebanon

Azerbaijan

Guinea

Cambodia-1

CAR-1

UAE

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

0 5 10 15 20 25 30

Expenditure on education as percentage of total public expenditure

Tota

l pub

lic e

xpen

ditu

re a

s a

perc

enta

ge o

f GD

P

> 7.0

6.0-7.0

5.0-6.0

2.5-5.0

<2.5

Note: -1 data refer to 2007Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics.

High

er sh

are

of p

ublic

sp

endi

ng

Higher share of education spending


Developing the measurement agendaDeveloping the measurement agenda

Improve relevance of benchmark measures• Explore grade or school-year based measures of

investments/costs• Capture the full picture of investments/costs

Improve comparative frameworks for measuring household contributions to education

• Reach consensus on what represents an education cost in different societies/economies

Data/indicators that are needed to address emerging issues...open for discussion

education investment and commitment: reassessing the international benchmarks

Documents