Deploying the Budget to Improve Quality

Abstract

Addresses issues of governance, financing, and managing resources for education in Sub-Saharan Africa, where severe deficiencies in public financial management (PFM) processes affect the efficacy of resource use and do not consider the specific requirements of the education sector. Though governments have devoted sizable and increasing resources to increase access to primary education, current expenditure patterns reflect policy choices made in the past. Almost all government spending on education gets absorbed by teachers’ salaries, with little spent on complementary inputs deemed critical to improving quality. Public spending on education is distributed highly unequally among household income quintiles because almost no students from the lowest quintiles attain upper-secondary or tertiary education. Decentralization initiatives have become widespread in Sub-Saharan Africa, including decentralization to subnational and local governments; more directly, to schools, through various forms of school grants; and, in a few cases, to non-state actors such as private providers or nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).