Education Spending by Country (latest available, 2021 to 2025)

Investment in Education Worldwide

Government expenditure on education as a percentage of GDP shows how much priority a country gives to public investment in schools, universities, teachers' salaries and learning materials. The Education 2030 Framework for Action, adopted under UNESCO, sets a benchmark of at least 4% to 6% of GDP, or 15% to 20% of public expenditure; 81 of the 179 countries in this table are below 4% of GDP.

The highest shares in this table are in Kiribati (16.4%, 2023), Tuvalu (12.8%, 2023), Namibia (9.1%, 2024) and Algeria (9.0%, 2024). Small economies can show large shares because running a national school system is a big cost relative to a small GDP, and some of it is paid for with aid. Among larger, richer economies, the Nordic countries spend between 5.4% and 7.3% of GDP and achieve some of the world's best education outcomes. Spending alone does not determine quality: how the money is spent matters as much as how much. South Korea (5.4%) and Singapore (2.2%) achieve world-class results through highly selective teacher recruitment, rigorous curricula and a strong cultural emphasis on learning.

Education is one of the strongest long-term investments a government can make. Countries that invested heavily in schooling as they developed, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore among them, are now among the world's most prosperous. Research consistently finds high returns to girls' education in developing countries, with higher earnings for women and lower fertility rates.