Agustín Claus
Basic education in Argentina is organized under a federal and decentralized scheme. The concern for equity and redistributive justice in educational financing under this scheme presents particularities and complexities that need to be understood in order to address the inequality around educational investment. The decentralization of educational institutions to subnational jurisdictions generated two institutionalized effects. The structural inequality of educational investment per student under state management at the subnational level and, at the same time, it has been almost three decades that the national state has not directly managed the Educative offer. From the perspective of the theory of fiscal federalism, intergovernmental fiscal tools are designed that allow an impact on inequities and inequalities between both levels of government. The educational investment gap with subnational financing increased from 5 to 8 times between the lowest and highest investment. The national State, established with funds of national origin to reduce it to between 3 and 5 times, remaining constant throughout the period. The incidence of transfers of national origin made it possible to reduce the gap of structural inequality in educational investment between subnational jurisdictions, although the challenge consists in planning financing in the search for equity and distributive justice under this federal and decentralized scheme.