Financing Education: Investments for the Future in Latin America and the Caribbean

1
Financing EducationInvestments for the Future
in Latin America and the Caribbean

• Third Meeting of Ministers of Education
• 
  Albert Motivans
• UNESCO
  Institute for Statistics
• 
  Mexico City, 12 August 2003

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Comparing education finance indicators

• Data quality issues
• Coverage (private, local government)
• Comparability
• Adopting and implementing upon a common framework
  and approach
• Summit of the Americas technical assistance
  programme
• World Education Indicators Programme Finance
  comparability study

3
Investing in Education

• Educational participation past and future
• Public and private funding for education
• Resources per student and per school career
• Meeting regional goals for 2010

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A Latin American success story

Source UNESCO/OECD, 2003 OECD, 1999
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Expanding educational opportunities

• Most countries are near UPE and some enrol more
  than 90 per cent of youth up to age 15
• Secondary net enrolment rates have risen in the
  1990s and range from 26 per cent (Guatemala) to
  86 per cent (Bahamas)
• Tertiary graduation rates are over 20 per cent in
  Chile and Argentina, but under 10 per cent in
  Brazil and Paraguay

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The distribution of opportunities

Source IDB as cited in Wolff and De Moura
Castro, 2003
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Education expenditure and primary enrolments,
1975 to 1997

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Education expenditure and primary classroom
inputs, 1975 to 1997

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Education expenditure as a of GDP
Source UIS
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Tertiary expenditure as a of GDP
Source UIS
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Allocating resources across levels

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Blurred boundaries between public and private
roles in education

Fees, in-kind contributions
Teachers and other costs
3
1
Voucher schemes, subsidies, grants, SLS
2
4
Fees, tuition
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Public and private education providers

• Defined by governance and source of funding
• Public
• Private
• Government-dependent ( gt 50 funding )
• Independent private ( lt 50 funding )
• Private provision in LAC countries is prevalent
  at both primary and secondary levels, especially
  govt.-dependent private tertiary provision is
  considerable

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Primary expenditure per student, PPP
Source UIS
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Expenditure per primary student as a of GDP
per capita
Source UIS
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Per student costs by levels of education

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Expenditure over the entire school career of a
student

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Cost of grade repetition as a of GDP

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Anticipating future educational demand

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Learning achievement and spending per
student (PISA 2000)

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Conclusions

• Efforts to expand education are showing positive
  results
• Public resources to education have increased
• Private contributions play a big role in
  financing education, especially at higher levels
• Per student costs vary widely
• Where prevalent, the cost of repetition represent
  a large part of total spending
• Future presents a  window of opportunity  for
  some and a challenge to even maintain current
  participation rates for others