Financing Secondary Educationin Developing Countries

Abstract

At the World Conference on Education for All in 1990, most developing countries reaffirmed their commitment to providing universal access to a first cycle of education to their school-age children. As a result, primary enrolments throughout the developing world have grown, fuelled by grants, expanded lending and by substantial domestic allocations of resources. Little attention was paid at the conference to the consequences of enrolment expansion in relation to the resources needed for secondary-schools. However, it was clear then that in many developing countries secondary school participation rates could not grow rapidly without changes in the structure and nature of their financing. Countries with the lowest gross enrolment rates at secondary had the highest ratio of costs per student as a proportion of GNP per capita and were often allocating substantial proportions of the total education budget to secondary. This book takes up the challenge that was predicted! and explores the problems and issues that surround secondary-school financing.