Publication: Education Finance Watch 2024
Loading...
Date
2025-01-29
ISSN
Published
2025-01-29
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
To achieve their national and international education goals, many countries need to invest more and better in their education systems. During the last decade, total education spending by governments, households, and donors globally has increased steadily, but this has not led to significant increases in allocations per child, especially in poorer countries with their growing populations. Total education spending per child has either decreased or stagnated globally. Additionally, the combination of the financial repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic plus escalating global debt is likely to be limiting the ability of countries to augment their investments in education. Moreover, the strain on public education budgets in recent years has coincided with a 4 to 8 percentage point decline in minimum reading and math proficiency among 15-year-olds compared to 2018 pre-COVID levels in middle-income countries (OECD, 2023). In low-income countries (LICs), where data on educational outcomes are scarce, simulations suggest that the incidence of learning poverty, which was already high before 2020, is likely to have risen in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic (World Bank et al., 2023). The current challenge in education finance is the need to mobilize more resources while at the same time increasing the adequacy, efficiency, and equity of funding in the face of tight fiscal space and competing priorities. Tackling the spending inefficiencies and inequalities that are common to many education systems will be vital to enable countries to make better use of their resources and strengthen the link between spending and education outcomes.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“World Bank; UNESCO. 2025. Education Finance Watch 2024. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/42743 License: CC BY-NC 3.0 IGO.”
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Education Finance Watch 2024(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-12-24)The Education Finance Watch (EFW) is a collaborative effort between the World Bank, the Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report, and the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS). The EFW aims to provide an analysis of trends, patterns, and issues in education financing around the world.Publication Education Finance Watch 2023(Washington DC, Paris, 2023-11-14)The Education Finance Watch (EFW) is a collaborative effort between the World Bank (WB), the Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report, and the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS). The EFW aims to provide an analysis of trends, patterns, and issues in education financing around the world. The EFW uses various sources of education, economic, and financial data from the World Bank, UIS, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The first volume of the EFW report (EFW2021) documented continuously increased global education spending in absolute terms over the decade but indicated that the COVID-19 pandemic would interrupt this trend. EFW2022 shed light on the impact of COVID-19 on global education spending in 2020, the first year of the pandemic, and revealed that half the analyzed sample of countries reduced their annual education spending, in real terms. This year, the EFW2023 updates analyses on trends and patterns of education spending for the past 10 years, up to 2021, the second fiscal year after COVID-19. As a special theme of this year’s volume, the EFW2023 sheds light on changes in the school-age population and projects its fiscal implications for the upcoming ten years for selected countries. In 2021, low-income countries (LIC) increased year-on-year total education spending (a total of government, households, and development aid) in real terms. This increase was driven by an increase in government spending, which reached 50 percent of total education spending, while official development assistance (ODA) to LIC decreased both in absolute and relative terms.Publication Challenges in Financing Education, Health, and Social Protection Expenditures in Zimbabwe(Washington, DC, 2011-02-02)The Government of Zimbabwe (GOZ) faces difficult choices in managing the size of its civil service wage bill. The Government understands the need to watch the escalating wage bill carefully and put in place a strategy to steer it to a sustainable level as early as possible. Historical and international comparisons suggest that an overall wage bill of around 10 percent of GDP should be the medium-term target. This note illustrates that Zimbabwe could take immediate steps in 2010 and 2011 that will put it on the path of a sustainable level of wage bill in the medium-term. The focus of efforts to contain the wage bill should be on short-term measures because designing and implementing a medium-term approach to wage bill management would be too challenging in view of prevailing economic uncertainty and complex political reality. The note covers the staff employed by the Central Government, including uniformed services and staff employed by the Grant-in-Aided (GIA) institutions. The staff employed by local governments and public enterprises are excluded because direct transfers from the central budget to local government and public enterprises are rather small. (annex A has an outline of the institutional aspects of civil service in Zimbabwe). Given the paucity of information, the note does not make any recommendations specific to the GIA wage bill.Publication Republic of Congo : Enhancing Efficiency in Education and Health Public Spending for Improved Quality Service Delivery for All(Washington, DC, 2014-06)The development of a wealthier, literate, and healthy society is a fundamental goal of Congo's national development plan (NDP) 2012-16 and poverty reduction strategy paper (PRSP) 2012-16. Appropriate funding allocations and efficient use of funds in education and health are fundamental for the development of the sectors. This public expenditure review (PER) of the Congolese education and health sectors aims at providing inputs to improve efficiency and equity in spending in these sectors. It takes into account the following findings of the macro PER: (i) spending on the social sectors is still low although it has increased over time; (ii) the fiscal space generated by the increased oil revenues has largely boosted investment expenditure; and (iii) budget execution is low which contributes to lower the real level of public spending. The PER is divided in two main parts. Part I, constitutes an overview of the two sector reports. Thus, it presents a brief analysis of the context of the country, a summary of findings of the education and health PER, a discussion on cross-cutting themes on spending in the two sectors, and a summary of recommendations. Part II includes the education and health PER.Publication Financing Basic Education(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2022-07-31)Zambia introduced free and compulsory general education in 2011, but its implementation has been incomplete. In 2021, the government introduced the “Education for All” policy which abolished all formal and informal fees in general education (pre-primary, primary, and both lower and upper secondary levels), with fees replaced by compensatory increases in grants to schools. This note presents simulation results of the fiscal implications of the Education for All policy from 2022 to 2035. However, the introduction of measures to reduce costs and increase further the share of the budget allocated to education are likely to make the successful implementation of Education for All achievable. The note presents a range of cost-saving policies, similar to those employed by other countries to reduce costs during periods of rapid system expansion without negatively impacting learning. These include rationalized use of teachers’ housing, administrative offices, and laboratories and improved utilization of secondary school teachers. Implementing these policies, alongside the increases in education outlined in the Medium-Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) would make the Education for All policy more affordable. However, our most expansive enrollment scenario would only be affordable if these cost-saving policies were coupled with further increases in education’s share of the government budget.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication The Journey Ahead(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-10-31)The Journey Ahead: Supporting Successful Migration in Europe and Central Asia provides an in-depth analysis of international migration in Europe and Central Asia (ECA) and the implications for policy making. By identifying challenges and opportunities associated with migration in the region, it aims to inform a more nuanced, evidencebased debate on the costs and benefits of cross-border mobility. Using data-driven insights and new analysis, the report shows that migration has been an engine of prosperity and has helped address some of ECA’s demographic and socioeconomic disparities. Yet, migration’s full economic potential remains untapped. The report identifies multiple barriers keeping migration from achieving its full potential. Crucially, it argues that policies in both origin and destination countries can help maximize the development impacts of migration and effectively manage the economic, social, and political costs. Drawing from a wide range of literature, country experiences, and novel analysis, The Journey Ahead presents actionable policy options to enhance the benefits of migration for destination and origin countries and migrants themselves. Some measures can be taken unilaterally by countries, whereas others require close bilateral or regional coordination. The recommendations are tailored to different types of migration— forced displacement as well as high-skilled and low-skilled economic migration—and from the perspectives of both sending and receiving countries. This report serves as a comprehensive resource for governments, development partners, and other stakeholders throughout Europe and Central Asia, where the richness and diversity of migration experiences provide valuable insights for policy makers in other regions of the world.Publication Lebanon Economic Monitor, Fall 2022(Washington, DC, 2022-11)The economy continues to contract, albeit at a somewhat slower pace. Public finances improved in 2021, but only because spending collapsed faster than revenue generation. Testament to the continued atrophy of Lebanon’s economy, the Lebanese Pound continues to depreciate sharply. The sharp deterioration in the currency continues to drive surging inflation, in triple digits since July 2020, impacting the poor and vulnerable the most. An unprecedented institutional vacuum will likely further delay any agreement on crisis resolution and much needed reforms; this includes prior actions as part of the April 2022 International Monetary Fund (IMF) staff-level agreement (SLA). Divergent views among key stakeholders on how to distribute the financial losses remains the main bottleneck for reaching an agreement on a comprehensive reform agenda. Lebanon needs to urgently adopt a domestic, equitable, and comprehensive solution that is predicated on: (i) addressing upfront the balance sheet impairments, (ii) restoring liquidity, and (iii) adhering to sound global practices of bail-in solutions based on a hierarchy of creditors (starting with banks’ shareholders) that protects small depositors.Publication World Development Report 2006(Washington, DC, 2005)This year’s Word Development Report (WDR), the twenty-eighth, looks at the role of equity in the development process. It defines equity in terms of two basic principles. The first is equal opportunities: that a person’s chances in life should be determined by his or her talents and efforts, rather than by pre-determined circumstances such as race, gender, social or family background. The second principle is the avoidance of extreme deprivation in outcomes, particularly in health, education and consumption levels. This principle thus includes the objective of poverty reduction. The report’s main message is that, in the long run, the pursuit of equity and the pursuit of economic prosperity are complementary. In addition to detailed chapters exploring these and related issues, the Report contains selected data from the World Development Indicators 2005‹an appendix of economic and social data for over 200 countries. This Report offers practical insights for policymakers, executives, scholars, and all those with an interest in economic development.Publication Classroom Assessment to Support Foundational Literacy(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-03-21)This document focuses primarily on how classroom assessment activities can measure students’ literacy skills as they progress along a learning trajectory towards reading fluently and with comprehension by the end of primary school grades. The document addresses considerations regarding the design and implementation of early grade reading classroom assessment, provides examples of assessment activities from a variety of countries and contexts, and discusses the importance of incorporating classroom assessment practices into teacher training and professional development opportunities for teachers. The structure of the document is as follows. The first section presents definitions and addresses basic questions on classroom assessment. Section 2 covers the intersection between assessment and early grade reading by discussing how learning assessment can measure early grade reading skills following the reading learning trajectory. Section 3 compares some of the most common early grade literacy assessment tools with respect to the early grade reading skills and developmental phases. Section 4 of the document addresses teacher training considerations in developing, scoring, and using early grade reading assessment. Additional issues in assessing reading skills in the classroom and using assessment results to improve teaching and learning are reviewed in section 5. Throughout the document, country cases are presented to demonstrate how assessment activities can be implemented in the classroom in different contexts.Publication Argentina Country Climate and Development Report(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-11)The Argentina Country Climate and Development Report (CCDR) explores opportunities and identifies trade-offs for aligning Argentina’s growth and poverty reduction policies with its commitments on, and its ability to withstand, climate change. It assesses how the country can: reduce its vulnerability to climate shocks through targeted public and private investments and adequation of social protection. The report also shows how Argentina can seize the benefits of a global decarbonization path to sustain a more robust economic growth through further development of Argentina’s potential for renewable energy, energy efficiency actions, the lithium value chain, as well as climate-smart agriculture (and land use) options. Given Argentina’s context, this CCDR focuses on win-win policies and investments, which have large co-benefits or can contribute to raising the country’s growth while helping to adapt the economy, also considering how human capital actions can accompany a just transition.