This paper looks at how countries have mobilized additional resources for education and assesses their impact on access and learning outcomes, using the World Bank's new Learning-Adjusted Years of Schooling measure. The paper shows that global spending on education has risen significantly over the past two decades, although spending as a share of gross domestic product has remained relatively unchanged, at about 4.5 percent. However, global trends mask large differences across regions and country income groups. For example, low-income countries recorded the largest increases in terms of the share of GDP spent on education, but the absolute amount they devoted to education remained low compared to other countries. Economic growth has been the main driver of increases in public education spending. Yet, countries that achieved the largest and most rapid spending increases did this through a combination of increases in overall government revenues, a greater prioritization of education in the government budget as well as healthy economic growth. Increases in public education spending did not generally result in major improvements in average education outcomes. Using the available data, the paper shows that a doubling of government spending per child led to an increase in learning-adjusted years of schooling of only half a year. Preliminary findings also show that countries with lower efficiency and spending are expected to get the most from increases in spending in improved education outcomes. The paper concludes by outlining an approach that allows countries to assess their potential for increasing education funding and the expected effects on their education outcomes, based on benchmarks drawing from the data of comparable countries. It also underscores the urgent need to improve data on public education spending and education outcomes, to extend this analysis to cover a wider set of countries and increase the robustness of country-level benchmarks.
Details
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Author
Al-Samarrai,Samer, Cerdan-Infantes,Pedro, Lehe,Jonathan David
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Document Date
2019/03/11
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Document Type
Policy Research Working Paper
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Report Number
WPS8773
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Volume No
1
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Total Volume(s)
1
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Country
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Region
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Disclosure Date
2019/03/11
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Disclosure Status
Disclosed
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Doc Name
Mobilizing Resources for Education and Improving Spending Effectiveness : Establishing Realistic Benchmarks Based on Past Trends
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Keywords
public education spending; Fragile and Conflict-Affected Situations; regional decomposition; accountability in the education sector; secondary school gross enrollment rate; Primary and Secondary Education; public financial management system; share of public spending; efficiency of public spending; source of education fund; share of public funding; free compulsory primary education; Learning and Innovation Credit; country income group; total government spending; government education expenditure; gross domestic product; years of schooling; secondary school student; education for all; purchasing power parity; public primary education; fast economic growth; real government spending; finance education; child in school; overseas development assistance; government budget deficit; rate of growth; income group averages; terms of education; total public spending; income from property; Access to Education; resources for education; description of data; primary school enrollment; quality of education; improvements in access; amount of fund; net enrollment rate; result of change; primary school student; public sector spending; education outcome
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Citation
Al-Samarrai,Samer Cerdan-Infantes,Pedro Lehe,Jonathan David
Mobilizing Resources for Education and Improving Spending Effectiveness : Establishing Realistic Benchmarks Based on Past Trends (English). Policy Research working paper,no. WPS 8773 Washington, D.C. : World Bank Group. http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/244151552329948414/Mobilizing-Resources-for-Education-and-Improving-Spending-Effectiveness-Establishing-Realistic-Benchmarks-Based-on-Past-Trends