Students participate in class while listing to class teacher at the Sujat Nagar urban slum school in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Photo: © Dominic Chavez/World Bank
The latest 2024 Education Finance Watch (EFW) report from the World Bank and UNESCO shows that during the last decade, total education spending by governments, households and donors globally has increased steadily. However, this rise has not led to major increases in allocations per child, especially in poorer countries with growing populations. Globally, total education spending per child has either decreased or stagnated.
Key Findings:
- Spending is rising, but it is still not enough to address the learning crisis, especially in low-income countries:
Global education spending has been on an upward trajectory over the past decade, signaling strong commitment from governments. However, in many low-income countries, even those that have reached the recommended education spending targets for their Gross Domestic Product (GDP) level, absolute levels of funding remain too low to guarantee adequate student learning. - Spending more is not enough without attention to efficiency and equity:
To improve educational outcomes, governments must spend more efficiently in ways that differ depending on context. But the building blocks are the same everywhere: enhancing public financial management to allocate resources to the most cost-effective programs; promptly addressing local needs; and improving school management to optimize teacher performance and the best possible use of available resources. - While the absolute amount of education aid is high, its proportion of total development aid has declined:
The share of total development aid allocated to education fell from 9.3% in 2019 to 7.6% in 2022, reflecting donors’ shift in funding priorities to energy, support for Ukraine, and health care in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. - Debt is putting a strain on education:
Some low and lower middle-income countries allocate nearly the same per capita resources to debt servicing as they do to education. Innovative financing mechanisms can be leveraged for short-term relief. - We need more and better data reporting:
Disaggregated data by expenditure type or education level would be useful, as well as tracking household out-of-pocket education expenditures.
The Education Finance Watch report shines a light on the state of education financing, so that countries, donors, partners, and communities can take informed action. Since 2021, this collaboration between the World Bank (WB), the Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report team and the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) has tracked trends in education spending, examining how much countries invest in education and how these investments align with their development needs, particularly in low- and middle-income countries, which face the most severe challenges. The EFW uses various sources of education, economic, and financial data from the WB, UIS, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
Explore Prior Education Finance Watch Reports from 2021 - 2023
Education Finance Watch 2023
Report Download | Summary Flyer | UNESCO
The Education Finance Watch (EFW) 2023 updates analyses on trends and patterns of education spending for the past ten years, up to 2021, the second year after the COVID-19 pandemic. As a special theme of this year’s volume, the EFW 2023 sheds light on changes in the school-age population and projects its fiscal implications for the upcoming ten years for selected countries.
The EFW 2023 finds that in 2021, low-income countries (LIC) increased year-on-year total education spending (a total of government, households, and official development assistance (ODA)) in real terms. This increase was driven by increased government spending, which reached 50 percent of total education spending, while ODA to LIC decreased in absolute and relative terms. Although the rise was notable, it was insufficient to close the learning gap sustained during the pandemic. Indeed, around the world, countries of all income levels are grappling with pandemic-induced learning loss.
Education Finance Watch 2022
The Education Finance Watch 2022 sheds further light on the impact of COVID-19 on global education financing in 2020, 2021, and 2022 and conducts a focused analysis of trends in government education budgets, and Official Development Assistance (ODA), using data available for high-income (HICs), low-income and lower-middle income countries (LICs and LMICs), as of May 2022.
The Education Finance Watch 2022 report found that half of the sample of countries analyzed reduced their annual real spending on education in 2020, compared to 2019. This spending reduction came despite the significant learning losses stemming from COVID-related school closures. Overall bilateral aid to education fell in 2020 compared to 2019, while households took on a large share of education costs in low-income countries with the onset of the pandemic.
Education Finance Watch 2021
Press Release: Two-Thirds of Poorer Countries Are Cutting Education Budgets Due to COVID-19
The Education Finance Watch 2021 provided a snapshot of how education budgets changed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Between 2010-2020, government education spending has increased steadily, but the Covid-19 pandemic impacted public finances dramatically, and the prospects for maintaining these increases have deteriorated. But the education finance challenge is not only about mobilizing resources but also about improving the effectiveness of funding. Unfortunately, recent increases in public education spending have been associated with relatively small improvements in education outcomes. Although access to education improved, 53 percent of ten-year-olds in low- and middle-income countries were unable to read and understand a short age-appropriate text. Tackling the large spending inefficiencies and inequalities common to many education systems will be vital in order to make better use of resources and strengthen the link between spending and education outcomes.