2023 Education Finance Watch

The EFW aims to provide an analysis of trends, patterns, and issues in education financing around the world.

This year, the EFW2023 updates analyses on trends and patterns of education spending for the past 10 years, up to 2021, the second fiscal year after COVID-19. As a special theme of this year’s volume, the EFW2023 sheds light on changes in the school-age population and projects its fiscal implications for the upcoming ten years for selected countries. In 2021, low-income countries (LIC) increased year-on-year total education spending (a total of government, households, and development aid) in real terms. This increase was driven by an increase in government spending, which reached 50 percent of total education spending, while official development assistance(ODA) to LIC decreased both in absolute and relative terms.

The Education Finance Watch (EFW) is a collaborative effort between the World Bank, the GEM Report, and the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS). The EFW aims to provide an analysis of trends, patterns, and issues in education financing around the world. The EFW uses various sources of education, economic, and financial data from the World Bank, UIS, the International Monetary Fund, and the Organization of Economic Co-operation
and Development (OECD).