Financing and infrastructure in education

Financing a field shows a community’s resources, as well as the importance attached to the field. In our case, we have focused mainly on the annual public expenditure on education (% of GDP) and GNI, government expenditure on education by categories, as well as financing sources and expenditure per student.

A highly relevant indicator among the above-mentioned ones is the indicator Public expenditure on education (% of GDP), included in Europe 2020 Strategy. The performance of the system of education is directly linked to the size of resources allocated and judicious use in fields such as investment in human resources (selection, competences and development) and modernization of facilities (infrastructure, equipment, digitalization). [read more]

The analysis of these variables in comparison with the European state of affairs reveals several problems: underfunding over a long period of time (the lowest funding among the European Union countries), as well as lack of or sharp decrease in infrastructure investment (over two thirds of expenditure goes into paying wages). Another significant indicator is expenditure per student, among the lowest in the EU in recent years. Public expenditure covers over 90% of financing, at all levels.

Other indicators in this subfield refer to facilities and equipment, a prerequisite for quality education. The aspects concerning the facilities are presented summarily, because they have limited relevance for system diagnosis. Although quantitative data is available about the number of schools and the number of facilities within schools, there is no information about their state (buildings, computers/internet connection) or their effective use. The indicators refer, for instance, to the number of schools by several classification criteria, such as residence or development region, as well as the number of school labs.