Publication: Education Finance Watch 2024
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Date
2025-01-29
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2025-01-29
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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.
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“World Bank; UNESCO. 2025. Education Finance Watch 2024. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/42743 License: CC BY-NC 3.0 IGO.”
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