Increasing Global Education Financing: Bold and Credible Pledges to Achieve Sustainable Change

Developing country governments have committed to ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and lifelong learning for all by 2030, but to achieve this requires greater education spending: to at least 4-6% of GDP and 15-20% of national total budgets. Currently, low-income countries allocate an average of 16.7% of their national budgets to education (Sub-Saharan Africa 16.6%; South Asia 15.3%). UNESCO estimates that government spending on education by low-income countries will need to increase by 50% as a share of GDP by 2030. Governments can and must increase resources allocated to education, and ensure that this funding is spent equitably and effectively to secure the right to free, quality education. This briefing analyses why and how they should do this. Domestic resources to finance this extra education spending can be found. In particular, developing countries should expand their tax bases in progressive ways to ensure that they are raising at least 20% of their GDP in tax revenues. Currently, low-income countries raise on average around 16%, compared to around 33% in OECD countries.