Sources, methodologies and technical notes for Chapter C

For general information on methodology, please refer to the OECD Handbook for Internationally Comparative Education Statistics: Concepts, Standards, Definitions and Classifications (OECD, 2018[1]).

Expenditure per student on educational institutions at a particular level of education is calculated by dividing total expenditure on educational institutions at that level by the corresponding full-time equivalent enrolment. Additionally, as data collected for expenditure on education is usually based on the financial reference year and data on students is based on the reference school year, adjustments were made for countries in which the financial year and the school year do not coincide (see Table X1.3 and X1.4) in order to compute expenditure per student.

In order to match the enrolment data with the financial year 2020, a weighted average of the enrolment data for the academic years 2019/20 and 2020/21 was calculated. The data were weighted in accordance with the proportion of each school year that fell within the financial year 2020.

Detailed information on the source metadata and detailed comments on raw data are available in the StatLink (Table 3.1), worksheets METADATA, FIN-STUDENTS (number of students adjusted to the financial year) and FIN1-SOURCE (education expenditure by source and destination).

Data on expenditure and full-time equivalent students are based on the UOE data collection on education systems administered annually by United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO,) the OECD and Eurostat for all OECD and partner countries. Available data from Argentina, China, India, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and South Africa are from the UNESCO Institute of Statistics (UIS). Additional provisional data on financial year 2021 were provided through a special questionnaire administered by the OECD and Eurostat in 2023.

Expenditure by educational institutions on ancillary services, such as student meals, room and board on campus and student transport, should include fees paid by students and families for those services. However, countries’ coverage of private spending on ancillary services is uneven and a number of countries exclude private spending on ancillary services.

For the 2019 reference year, due to a number of changes introduced in both the data sources and methodology used to calculate and compile Australia’s Finance collection, it is not possible to reproduce them in the trend file, resulting in a significant break in series. As a result of these changes, expenditure data from before the 2019 reference year is not comparable with previous years’ data.

For the 2020 reference year, Australia has updated its data sources and revised the methodology used to compile finance data, including household payments by fee paying students to private institutions and early childhood education and care (ECEC) expenditure data. The ECEC expenditure data includes the period between 6 April 2020 and 12 July 2020 when the childcare subsidy system was paused to provide free childcare in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, roughly three months of data is absent in the 2020 data compared to the 2019 data. Moreover, additional data from the COVID-19 support payments made in 2020 calendar year is included, noting that this data is not directly linked to individual children. As there is no precise way to split payment amounts by child age, age profiles have been approximated by apportioning based on a pre-COVID reference period, specifically the fortnight ending 1 March 2020. Further, a historical revision to non-government schools was implemented in Australia's 2020-21 Government Finance Statistics annual data, resulting in changes of data at International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) levels 1, 23 and 34. Non-government schools previously classified as non-profit institutions serving households have been re-classified to private, non-financial corporations from the calendar year 1985. This reclassification also necessitates a change to the transactions between commonwealth and state governments and non-government schools. Caution should be taken if comparing data for the reference years 2019 and 2020.

While most finance data has been apportioned across ISCED levels using UOE enrolment data as a proxy, there are some cases where specific enrolment data is used to apportion expenditure on a particular segment of the sector. Moreover, expenditure on vocational programmes (ISCED 2 to 4) and short-cycle tertiary programmes (ISCED 5) is underestimated since expenditure data for private vocational institutions is incomplete. It is likely that private institutions receive most of their funding from household direct expenditure and these institutions enrol more than half of all students at these levels. Hence, the main effect of not having this data is likely to be that household expenditure is underestimated at these levels. This also means that expenditure per full-time equivalent student is underestimated for these levels, especially for private institutions. In addition, the coverage of expenditure and enrolment data for private vocational institutions has changed over time. Due to the limited availability of data, it is difficult to ensure the coverage of enrolments matches the coverage of expenditure for these institutions. Expenditure per full-time equivalent student is underestimated for vocational students.

Public expenditure on education by the Health ministry is generally reported on ISCED level 4. Besides, some very small programmes were regrouped according to the centre of gravity of the institutions in charge of the provision.

Data on the German-speaking Community are not integrated into the data for Belgium in the UOE data collection. The French and Flemish Communities differ in the type of expenditure reported. While the French Community refer to actual expenditure data, the Flemish Community refer to budgeted accrual expenditure data. The data for ISCED-5 only apply to the Flemish Community. The French Community reports ISCED-5 data under ISCED-6.

All tables and charts in Indicator C1 present information on public expenditure on public educational institutions instead of total expenditure on educational institutions.

The pre-primary education data included in this indicator is comprised of pre-primary education delivered by Canadian primary schools. In some provinces, this will include one year only (kindergarten), while in others, it includes two (junior and senior kindergarten). Expenditure on “Primary, secondary and post-secondary non-tertiary education” and on “Primary to Tertiary education” does not include expenditure on post-secondary non-tertiary education. Due to improvements in the methodology for calculating private Finance data for ISCED levels 1 and 3, starting in 2019/2020, direct comparisons to previous years should not be made

Government expenditure data is reported on an accrual accounting basis. For Chile, payments made by households outside of educational institutions, as well as regional government expenditure, is negligible. As of 2016, the methodology to report enrolled students in upper secondary general versus vocational programmes was updated to better reflect the Chilean education system. That is, the first two years of upper secondary education are taught under a general formation programme in sciences and humanities. After the successful completion of the second year, students can opt to continue in a differentiated general or vocational programme for the remaining two years of upper secondary education. This update explains the significant increase in expenditure per student in vocational upper secondary education, compared to previous years.

Expenditure per student is calculated as expenditure divided by the total headcount of students, which is equivalent to full-time equivalents because there are no part-time students.

Level 5 in ISCED 2011 includes only students of conservatoires. And data from other ministries than the Ministry of Education is excluded.

The allocation of expenditure on primary and lower secondary education is estimated on the basis of the corresponding enrolment. A minor part of the allocation of expenditure on upper secondary education into general and vocational programmes is based on the enrolment into these programmes. Trend analysis of the expenditures must be done with caution prior to 2016 due to the different data sources used in different years. Data is comparable from 2016-2020.

There has been significant change in classification of institutions since year 2017. Major part of ISCED 0-3 independent private institutions were classified as government-dependent private institutions due to core funding received from government agencies. Government-dependent private universities (ISCED 6-8) were classified as public universities due to overall control criteria. These changes lead to non-compatibility by type of institution between year 2016 and year 2017. Due to differences in the source of data and methodological changes, trend data for years 2014-2016 are not totally comparable with information from previous years. Since 2017, there is additional change of data source for public universities that make up large part of expenditure of tertiary education in Estonia. In addition, private component of expenditure on education is underestimated as methodology to include data for payments outside educational institutions and scholarships/grants to households and students has yet to be developed.

The number of students is not adjusted to the financial year for data before 2014.

Finland's vocational education system (ISCED 3 vocational, ISCED 4 vocational) was revised in 2018. This had an impact on legislation, qualification system, financing, monitoring and provision of vocational education. The changes affect the data from school year 2018-19 and calendar year 2018 onwards. Due to the changes in the vocational education system the data is not wholly comparable to previous years.

The data source on enrolments at ISCED levels 3-4 changed to Finnish National Agency for Education's KOSKI data warehouse data in school year 2019-20. Previously data were based on Statistics Finland's data collections. This causes some differences in the data on expenditure per student especially for ISCED 3-4 vocational education. E.g. data on enrolment in vocational school- and work-based programmes (ISCED 3) is the situation in 20 September starting from the school year 2019-20. Previously this data covered whole school year. The changes increase expenditure per student at ISCED 3-4 vocational education. In addition, government transfers to private entities for apprenticeship training are included as government direct expenditure on educational institutions, which is therefore overestimated, whereas government transfers to other private entities and other private entities’ payments to educational institutions are both underestimated.

The change between public and government-dependent private institutions on enrolment numbers in vocational education in school year 2019-20 (public decreases and government-dependent private increases) is mainly caused by the change in the reporting of vocational school- and work-based programmes. Previously all students in vocational school- and work-based programmes were recorded as enrolling in public institutions. Starting from school year 2019-20 information on whether the institution is public or government-dependent private institution is reported. This is a break in time series on the division of ISCED 3 and 4 vocational education enrolment to public and government-dependent private institutions and on expenditure per student. At the same time the reform of vocational education system which started in 2018 was still ongoing and some students were still studying according to the old vocational education system. This may also cause some fluctuation in the results.

All students are reported as full-time students (FTE 1,0) at ISCED levels 0-4. This may have some impact on expenditure per student especially at ISCED 3-4 levels as some students are not studying full-time.

The main source used for data on education expenditure is the French Education Account, which is a national satellite account of the National Accounts. Adjustments are made to take into consideration the differences from the scope of the UOE data collection. The expenditure on ISCED level 4 is not allocated by orientation (general or vocational), the amounts are reallocated between general and vocational programmes depending on the number of students enrolled. Household expenditure includes tuition fees, student transportation, dining halls, dormitories/halls of residence, and educational goods and services purchased by households outside educational institutions (books and supplies). Scholarships are allocated to general purposes; thus, it is not possible to distinguish between the part attributable to educational institutions and the one which is not attributable to educational institutions. A correction has been made to the 2012 data to remove the double counting of some expenditure for ancillary services. The expenses and number of students from CPGE, BTS enrolled in “lycées” are reported at the tertiary education level.

Expenditure for instruction by enterprises in the so-called „dual system” (i.e. programmes that combine school- and work-based instruction) is included in this indicator (ISCED 3 and 4). Data on lower secondary vocational programmes (ISCED 25) are included in upper secondary vocational programmes (ISCED 35).

As of reference year 2019 expenditure on advanced vocational training (Aufstiegsfortbildung) is included in ISCED 55 and 65. The inclusion of this data leads to a break in time series.

To separate expenditure for instruction from R&D expenditure at universities (ISCED 6 to 8) R&D coefficients are applied. The R&D coefficients and the underlying methodological assumptions have been reviewed in the years 2016 and 2017. Starting from reporting year 2016, the Federal Statistical Office applies a new method for the determination of the R&D coefficients that leads to breaks in time series. There are different R&D coefficients and methods for the different types of universities and colleges within the higher education sector.

Payments of private entities to independent private institutions is only partially covered. As a consequence, the total private expenditure on educational institutions and the total public and private expenditure on educational institutions are underestimated.

The expenditure on primary to upper secondary levels (ISCED levels 1 to 3) is estimated on the basis of the number of students at each level.

Ireland undertook a review of expenditure data that went as far back as 2015; therefore, data before 2015 cannot be compared to those of 2015 and after. Ancillary services at the primary to post-secondary non-tertiary level include only school transport. For Ireland the changes from 2014 to 2015 are largely driven by the substantial increase in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2015. For more information on this increase see http://www.cso.ie/en/media/csoie/newsevents/documents/pr_GDPexplanatorynote.pdf. In 2016 Ireland produced a modified GNI (GNI*) that was recommended by the Economic Statistics Review Group and is designed to exclude globalisation effects that are disproportionately impacting the measurement size of the Irish Economy.

Ancillary services are included in total expenditure on educational institutions. Classification of public institutions, private and governmental National Provider Identifiers (NPIs), has been made according to the definitions of the System of National Accounts (SNA). Expenditure by non-profit institutions of own sources is not included as well as other minor expenditure items: Expenditure in non-university schools attached to hospitals for training of nurses and other para-medical professionals, expenditure on vocational schools of the Israeli Defence Forces. The number of students in those categories was excluded also from the data collection. Scholarships not attributable to tuition were excluded from tuition. From 2012, the "Yeshiva" has been classified at upper secondary – General schools (ISCED 3). The students of Hebrew teaching, adult courses, training courses and supplementary training for adults, supervised by the ministry of economy and industry, were classified in ISCED5. Some minor expenditure items were excluded from the data collection (e.g. Expenditures on education from international sources, expenditure in non-university schools attached to hospitals from training of nurses and certain other para-medical professionals, expenditure in vocational schools of the Israeli Defence Forces).

Since October 2019, free early childhood education and care is a universal legal entitlement for children age 3 to 5.

Expenditure on some educational programmes provided by ministries other than the Ministry of Education is excluded (police college, polytechnic college, military academy, etc.) There were some significant changes in the methodology used in the data collection. For financial year 2014, Korea mapped undistributed programmes, which included municipal and national expenditure by the Ministry of Education, to ISCED 0-8 levels (mainly to ISCED 0-3). Since the financial year 2015, Korea has removed 'carryover' and 'reserve fund' from the previous year for the all education levels. Due to differences in the methodology adopted in 2015 fiscal year, trend data are reported as missing as they would not be comparable. In addition, at the tertiary level, ancillary services are not separated but included in total expenditure on educational institutions. Expenditures on public institutions may be over-represented because of the inclusion of undistributed programmes. For the financial year 2019, the decrease in government expenditure (G5) at the tertiary level is resulted from the limitation in the data collection method, not the reduction of government expenditure in real terms. The government subsidies for some R&D projects of the reference year had not been paid during the reference period defined in the UOE FINANCE questionnaire owing to the difference in the accounting period between the educational institutions and the government agencies. Therefore, attention is required when interpreting the time series data of the corresponding figures.

Expenditure in primary, lower secondary (general and vocational), upper secondary (general and vocational) and post-secondary non-tertiary education levels are estimated by breaking down the aggregated figures based on the number of full-time equivalent students enrolled in general and vocational programmes at the corresponding ISCED level. Household payments outside education institutions are estimated using Household Budget Survey data and Consumer price indices.

Expenditure of central level of government (i.e. for development of curricula, psychological aid or academic/professional guidance, or part of transport services) has been attributed to public institutions only, even if student from private institutions benefit from part of these services. As a consequence, expenditure on private institutions is underestimated. The small difference between general and vocational programmes is due to the fact that expenditure occurring during the time spent in class is included. All other expenditure (for example expenditure of private enterprises) is not included in the calculation so that the costs of vocational programmes (especially dual programmes) are underestimated.

Data refers to budget expenditure instead of actual expenditure. A new method is used since Education at a Glance (EAG) 2020 to calculate household expenditure on education. Accordingly, expenditure data from 2018 onwards should not be compared with previous data.

“Upper Secondary” as used in EAG includes programmes done both as part of the initial compulsory school system, and programmes done in post-schooling institutions. Post-school ISCED 3 relates to qualifications at levels 1-3 on the New Zealand Qualification Framework, and while these programmes are at the same ISCED level as school-based qualifications, they are not part of the upper secondary school system in New Zealand. Initial school-based upper secondary education is generally-oriented, while the large majority of post-school study at ISCED 3 is vocational. Both systems have different funding and regulatory arrangements, and different types of students. While initial upper secondary mainly relates to students aged 15-18, adults of any age can enrol in post-school programmes at ISCED 3. Care is therefore needed when making inferences about New Zealand's initial upper secondary schooling system from “total upper secondary” results in EAG, as they reflect an average of these two different systems. While general and vocational education at ISCED 3 level is not exclusively split between initial and post-initial schooling in New Zealand, to better help policy makers and other readers interpret and use EAG ISCED 3 comparisons, all New Zealand results relating to New Zealand's initial schooling upper secondary system have been reported as “upper secondary general” (ISCED 34), while all results relating to New Zealand's post-schooling ISCED 3 system (level 1-3 qualifications on the New Zealand Qualifications Framework (NZQF) have been reported as “upper secondary vocational” (ISCED 35)).

Expenditure on ancillary services at primary education (ISCED 1) consist only of transportation. Expenditure on ancillary services from lower secondary education up to short-cycle tertiary education (ISCED 2-5) includes transportation and common expenses and support functions related to education (not directly linked to core education). At tertiary level (ISCED 6-8), expenditure on ancillary services includes welfare services and contributions to housing on campus. The funds on ancillary services at this level are devoted to student unions, who are responsible for offering ancillary services to students at both public and private educational institutions. However, student unions themselves are defined as “non-instructional educational institutions” (according to the UOE manual) and regarded as government-dependent private institutions. Thus, all ancillary-expenditure at tertiary level is reported as expenditure in government-dependent private intuitions and no expenditure at public institutions. It is important to emphasize that funds to student unions is spent to offer ancillary services for students at all type of institutions. Public expenditure on educational core services is included for all ISCED levels as well as public spending on university research. Private expenditure covers tuition fees in early childhood education (ISCED 0), post-secondary non-tertiary programmes (ISCED 4), short-cycle tertiary programmes (ISCED 5), and private long-cycle tertiary programmes (ISCED 6-8). Private expenditure as tuition fees in upper secondary (ISCED 3) is set equal to student loans attributable for tuition fees since there is no available data on tuition fees payment to private educational institutions at this level. In reality, it is expected that private expenditure exceeds student loans attributable for tuition fees. Total expenditure on public educational institutions at long-cycle tertiary level does not include direct expenditure from international sources, except international payments to educational institutions for R&D expenditure. Due to changes in the method used to allocate expenditure on education across ISCED level 2 and above, 2020 data should not be compared with previous years.

Total expenditure on education from international sources does not include direct expenditure on private institutions, Private expenditure does not include households’ payments for private tutoring and for goods and services not required for participation. From 2017 private expenditure paid to institutions for ancillary services has been estimated. As a result of the structural reform of the Polish education system (started in the school year 2017/18), data for ISCED levels 1-3 for year 2017 are not fully comparable with those of previous years. Due to the change in the budget classification, data for ISCED levels 6-8 since 2019 have included expenditure on higher education and science.

Break in time series: after 2014 Romania implemented a new methodology following the ISCED 2011 international classification and the European Commission Regulation 912/2013 resulting in an improved breakdown of expenditure by level of education. Starting with reference year 2015, the coverage of private expenditure improved thanks to the data on education expenditure from the Household Budget Survey (HBS) survey supplementary section. Finally, the number of students was adjusted to the financial year starting with reference year 2017.

Part of expenditure on ISCED levels 1 to 5 is estimated on the basis of the number of students at each level. ISCED level 5 include students of conservatories and students of secondary vocational schools studying short-cycle tertiary programmes. Private expenditure - and hence total expenditure - are underestimated due to the lack of data on capital expenditure in private institutions and payments for private tutoring.

The allocation of expenditure on primary and lower secondary education (basic education in Slovenia) is estimated based on the proportion of teaching hours (according to curriculum). Expenditure of other non-educational private entities on educational institutions since 2018 include also expenditure related to mentoring practical education and training of students at the work place as part of their formal education programmes. Since 2019, this expenditure also include some rental revenues related to formal education that were not considered before. International expenditure for education (F20) since 2019 include EU part of funds, transferred to government, for scholarships and for subsidies to private organizations for mentoring practical education and training of students at the workplace. For previous years these EU funds were not considered separately (in F6); they were only included within government transfers to households and other private entities. For 2019, direct international expenditure for public, non-instructional educational institutions was reported within government expenditure.

From 2020, there is a break in the time series. The coverage of education institutions for UOE financial data has been supplemented. This change affected the volume of funds from various sources for/of public and private educational institutions; the highest increase in volume of funds was in budget funds for educational institutions (by about EUR 40 million in 2020), the largest part for institutions implementing programmes at the level of primary education. The estimated part of market revenues related to tuition fees for formal adult education programmes, in educational institutions that implement these programmes was additionally taken into account. This change affected the increase in private (households’) expenditure on educational institutions (by about EUR 72 million in 2020), mainly at the levels of upper secondary and tertiary education. The part of market revenues not considered as connected with formal education programmes or participation in formal education are not taken into account as a part of expenditure for formal education. Covid pandemic and measures related to it also affected the data on expenditure for formal education for 2020.

Expenditure for retirement of personnel other than teachers in public institutions is not included. Expenditure on ancillary services at the tertiary level is overestimated, as part of this expenditure is not addressed directly to universities themselves, but to institutions providing these services to university students. However, this does not affect the total level of expenditure at the tertiary level.

Private expenditure in upper secondary non-tertiary level and in short-cycle tertiary education are underestimated; as a consequence, at those ISCED levels total expenditure on educational institutions is underestimated as well. A new method is used since EAG 2019 to estimate the split of expenditure between general and vocational at ISCED 3. The new method is allocating a larger share of expenditures to the general programmes.

Private expenditure for dual-track Vocational Education and Training (VET) programmes undertaken by enterprises at the upper secondary level is included.

Household expenditure is underestimated as no reliable estimate for payments outside educational institutions exists.

Expenditure on (as well as enrolment in) general and vocational education is based on the type of institution rather than type of course. Figures for general/academic education is based on spending on schools and higher education institutions, figures for vocational spending are based on spending on further education colleges.

Funds for major federal R&D centres administered by universities are excluded.

See also notes on Indicator C2.

For general information on methodology, please refer to the OECD Handbook for Internationally Comparative Education Statistics: Concepts, Standards, Definitions and Classifications (OECD, 2018[1]).

GDP data

Statistics on educational expenditure relate to the financial year 2020. For countries in which GDP is not reported for the same reference period as data on educational funding, GDP is estimated as: w_t-1 (GDP_{t - 1}) + w_t (GDP_t), where w_t and w_t-1 are the weights for the respective portions of the two reference periods for GDP that fall within the educational financial year. Adjustments were made for Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States (see Annex 2).

Detailed information on the source metadata and detailed comments on raw data are available in the StatLink (Table 3.1), worksheets METADATA and FIN1-SOURCE (education expenditure by source and destination).

Data on expenditure on educational institutions are based on the UOE data collection on education systems administered annually by UNESCO, the OECD and Eurostat for all OECD and partner countries. Available data from Argentina, China, India, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and South Africa are from the UNESCO Institute of Statistics (UIS). Additional provisional data on financial year 2021 were provided through a special questionnaire administered by the OECD and Eurostat in 2023.

Data on GDP have been obtained from the OECD National Accounts Statistics Database.

For the 2019 reference year, due to a number of changes introduced in both the data sources and methodology used to calculate and compile Australia’s Finance collection, it is not possible to reproduce them in the trend file, resulting in a significant break in series. As a result of these changes, expenditure data from before the 2019 reference year is not comparable with previous years’ data.

For the 2020 reference year, Australia has updated its data sources and revised the methodology used to compile finance data, including household payments by fee paying students to private institutions and ECEC expenditure data. The ECEC expenditure data includes the period between 6 April 2020 and 12 July 2020 when the childcare subsidy system was paused to provide free childcare in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, roughly three months of data is absent in the 2020 data compared to the 2019 data. Moreover, additional data from the COVID-19 support payments made in 2020 calendar year is included, noting that this data is not directly linked to individual children. As there is no precise way to split payment amounts by child age, age profiles have been approximated by apportioning based on a pre-COVID reference period, specifically the fortnight ending 1 March 2020. Further, a historical revision to non-government schools was implemented in Australia's 2020-21 Government Finance Statistics annual data, resulting in changes of data at ISCED levels 1, 23 and 34. Non-government schools previously classified as non-profit institutions serving households have been re-classified to private, non-financial corporations from the calendar year 1985. This reclassification also necessitates a change to the transactions between commonwealth and state governments and non-government schools. Caution should be taken if comparing data for the reference years 2019 and 2020.

Expenditure on vocational programmes (ISCED 2 to 4) and short-cycle tertiary programmes (ISCED 5) is underestimated since expenditure data for private vocational institutions is incomplete. It is likely that private institutions receive most of their funding from household direct expenditure and these institutions enrol more than half of all students at these levels. Hence, the main effect of not having this data is likely to be that household expenditure is underestimated at these levels. While most finance data has been apportioned across ISCED levels using UOE enrolment data as a proxy, there are some cases where specific enrolment data is used to apportion expenditure on a particular segment of the sector.

Public expenditure on education by the Health ministry is generally reported on ISCED level 4. Besides, some very small programmes were regrouped according to the centre of gravity of the institutions in charge of the provision.

French and Flemish Communities differ in the type of expenditure reported. While the French Community refer to actual expenditure data, the Flemish Community refer to budgeted accrual expenditure data. Prior to 2016, private expenditure was slightly underestimated since payments to independent private institutions were not integrated. Change in total expenditure on educational institutions as a percentage of GDP are influenced by the integration of independent private institutions since the school year 2016-2017 as well as by the creation of short-cycle tertiary programmes (ISCED-5) in 2009-2010 in the Flemish Community. In the Flemish Community, ISCED-5 programmes (with the exception of Nursing) were relocated from centres for adult education to colleges for higher education starting in 2019-2020. This relocation had a number of ramifications, ranging from students becoming eligible for study allowances and student services to changes in how the programmes are funded. The data for ISCED-5 only apply to the Flemish Community. The French Community reports ISCED-5 data under ISCED-6.

All tables and charts in Indicator C2 present information on public expenditure on public educational institutions instead of total expenditure on educational institutions.

The pre-primary education data included in this indicator is comprised of pre-primary education delivered by Canadian primary schools. In some provinces, this will include one year only (kindergarten), while in others, it includes two (junior and senior kindergarten). Expenditure on “Primary, secondary and post-secondary non-tertiary education” and on “Primary to Tertiary education” does not include expenditure on post-secondary non-tertiary education.

There has been significant change in classification of institutions since year 2017. Major part of ISCED 0-3 independent private institutions were classified as government-dependent private institutions due to core funding received from government agencies. Government-dependent private universities (ISCED 6-8) were classified as public universities due to overall control criteria. These changes lead to non-compatibility by type of institution between year 2016 and year 2017. Due to differences in the source of data and methodological changes, trend data for years 2014-2016 are not totally comparable with previous years information. Since 2017, there is additional change of data source for public universities that make up large part of expenditure of tertiary education in Estonia. In addition, private component of expenditure on education is underestimated as methodology to include data for payments outside educational institutions and scholarships/grants to households and students has yet to be developed.

Government transfers to private entities for apprenticeship training are included as government direct expenditure on educational institutions, which is therefore overestimated, whereas government transfers to other private entities and other private entities’ payments to educational institutions are both underestimated. Expenditure on education not leading to a formal degree or qualification is also not included.

The expenses and number of students from CPGE, BTS enrolled in “lycées” are reported at the tertiary education level.

ISCED 25 programmes are included with ISCED 35 programmes.

Payments of private entities to independent private institutions is only partially covered. As a consequence, the total private expenditure on educational institutions and the total public and private expenditure on educational institutions are underestimated.

Up to 2011, data do not include private expenditure on private educational institutions.

Ireland undertook a review of expenditure data that went as far back as 2015; therefore, data before 2015 cannot be compared to those of 2015 and after. The changes from 2014 to 2015 are largely driven by the substantial increase in GDP in 2015. For more information on this increase see:http://www.cso.ie/en/media/csoie/newsevents/documents/pr_GDPexplanatorynote.pdf. In 2016 Ireland produced a modified GNI (GNI*) that was recommended by the Economic Statistics Review Group and is designed to exclude globalisation effects that are disproportionately impacting the measurement size of the Irish Economy.

Expenditure by non-profit institutions of own sources is not included as well as other minor expenditure items: Expenditure in non-university schools attached to hospitals for training of nurses and other para-medical professionals, expenditure on vocational schools of the Israeli Defence Forces. Scholarships not attributable to tuition were excluded from tuition. From 2012, the "Yeshiva" has been classified at upper secondary – General schools (ISCED 3). The students of Hebrew teaching, Adults courses, training courses and supplementary training for adults, supervised by the ministry of economy and industry, were classified in ISCED5. Some minor expenditure items were excluded from the data collection (e.g. Expenditures on education from international sources, expenditure in non-university schools attached to hospitals from training of nurses and certain other para-medical professionals, expenditure in vocational schools of the Israeli Defence Forces).

Expenditure on “specialised training colleges (general course)”, “miscellaneous schools” and educational administration are not allocated by any educational levels. In order to reduce the burden of household educational costs, High School Tuition Support Fund have commenced in April 2010. This system supports funds for students to reduce the burden of household educational costs. Refund is unnecessary. In addition, in April 2014 the central government started giving subsidies to the local governments, which support high school students who are in a sudden change of household budget and/or who try to re-enter high school despite experiencing the dropout of school in the past. Since October 2019, free early childhood education and care is a universal legal entitlement for children age 3 to 5.

Expenditure on some educational programmes provided by ministries other than the Ministry of Education is excluded (police college, polytechnic college, military academy, etc.) There were some significant changes in the methodology used in the data collection. For financial year 2014, Korea mapped undistributed programmes, which included municipal and national expenditure by the Ministry of Education, to ISCED 0-8 levels (mainly to ISCED 0-3). Since the financial year 2015, Korea has removed 'carryover' and 'reserve fund' from the previous year for the all education levels. Due to differences in the methodology adopted in 2015 fiscal year compared to previous years, trend data are reported as missing as they would not be comparable. In addition, public loans (used in computing the initial source of funds) do not include the government-guaranteed student loans by the Korea Student Aid Foundation (KOSAF). Because the loans are funded by bonds of the KOSAF, a government-affiliated institute, they are classified as private loans. For the financial year 2019, the decrease in government expenditure (G5) at the tertiary level is resulted from the limitation in the data collection method, not the reduction of government expenditure in real terms. The government subsidies for some R&D projects of the reference year had not been paid during the reference period defined in the UOE FINANCE questionnaire owing to the difference in the accounting period between the educational institutions and the government agencies. Therefore, attention is required when interpreting the time series data of the corresponding figures.

Expenditure in primary, lower secondary (general and vocational), upper secondary (general and vocational) and post-secondary non-tertiary education levels are estimated by breaking down the aggregated figures based on the number of full-time equivalent students enrolled in general and vocational programmes at the corresponding ISCED level. Household payments outside education institutions are estimated using Household Budget Survey data and Consumer price indices.

At the tertiary level, Luxembourg spends more than half of public budget to fund Luxembourgish students studying abroad. As public funds devoted to students abroad are not taken into account in Chapter C, expenditure on tertiary education as a percentage of GDP and of total government expenditure is largely underestimated.

Data refers to budget expenditure instead of actual expenditure. A new method is used since EAG 2020 to calculate household expenditure on education. Accordingly, expenditure data from 2018 onwards should not be compared with previous data.

Educational expenditures are reported as percent of Mainland GDP (excluding off-shore oil and international shipping). Comparisons with earlier editions are inadvisable as the total GDP was used before 2011. Moreover, due to changes in the method used to allocate expenditure on education across ISCED level 2 and above, 2020 data should not be compared with previous years.

Total expenditure on education from international sources does not include direct expenditure on private institutions, As a result of the structural reform of the polish education system started in the school year 2017/18, data for ISCED levels 1-3 for year 2017 are not fully comparable with those of previous years. Due to the change in the budget classification, data for ISCED levels 6-8 since 2019 have included expenditure on higher education and science.

Break in time series: after 2014 Romania implemented a new methodology following the ISCED 2011 international classification and the European Commission Regulation 912/2013 resulting in an improved breakdown of expenditure by level of education. Starting with reference year 2015, the coverage of private expenditure improved thanks to the data on education expenditure from the HBS survey supplementary section.

Private expenditure - and hence total expenditure - are underestimated due to the lack of data on capital expenditure in private institutions and payments for private tutoring.

The allocation of expenditure on primary and lower secondary education (basic education in Slovenia) is estimated based on the proportion of teaching hours (according to curriculum). Expenditure of other non-educational private entities on educational institutions since 2018 include also expenditure related to mentoring practical education and training of students at the work place as part of their formal education programmes. Since 2019, this expenditure also include some rental revenues related to formal education that were not considered before. International expenditure for education (F20) since 2019 include EU part of funds, transferred to government, for scholarships and for subsidies to private organizations for mentoring practical education and training of students at the workplace. For previous years these EU funds were not considered separately (in F6); they were only included within government transfers to households and other private entities. From 2019, direct international expenditure for public, non-instructional educational institutions was reported within government expenditure.

From 2020, there is a break in the time series. The coverage of education institutions for UOE financial data has been supplemented. This change affected the volume of funds from various sources for/of public and private educational institutions; the highest increase in volume of funds was in budget funds for educational institutions (by about EUR 40 million in 2020), the largest part for institutions implementing programmes at the level of primary education. The estimated part of market revenues related to tuition fees for formal adult education programmes, in educational institutions that implement these programmes was additionally taken into account. This change affected the increase in private (households’) expenditure on educational institutions (by about EUR 72 million in 2020), mainly at the levels of upper secondary and tertiary education. The part of market revenues not considered as connected with formal education programmes or participation in formal education are not taken into account as a part of expenditure for formal education. Covid pandemic and measures related to it also affected the data on expenditure for formal education for 2020.

Private expenditure in upper secondary non-tertiary level and in short-cycle tertiary education are underestimated; as a consequence, at those ISCED levels total expenditure on educational institutions is underestimated as well. A new method is used since EAG 2019 to estimate the split of expenditure between general and vocational at ISCED 3. The new method is allocating a larger share of expenditures to the general programmes.

Household expenditure is underestimated as no reliable estimate for payments outside educational institutions exists.

Private expenditure on vocational education is underestimated as no reliable estimate for payments from private companies on education exists, enrolment numbers are adjusted in accordance with this so pay per student figures in C1 are unaffected, but figures for C2 and C3 will be.

Expenditure on (as well as enrolment in) general and vocational education is based on the type of institution rather than type of course. Figures for general/academic education is based on spending on schools and higher education institutions, figures for vocational spending are based on spending on further education colleges.

Data for ISCED levels 5-8 include most ISCED 4 level education, which generally occurs at institutions offering programmes at ISCED level 5 or higher. Distributions of funds among ISCED levels 0, 1, 2, and 3 are estimated.

See also notes on Indicator C1.

For general information on methodology, please refer to the OECD Handbook for Internationally Comparative Education Statistics: Concepts, Standards, Definitions and Classifications (OECD, 2018[1]).

Detailed information on the source metadata and detailed comments on raw data are available in the StatLink (see StatLink below Table 3.1), worksheets METADATA and FIN1-SOURCE (education expenditure by source and destination).

Data on expenditure on educational institutions are based on the UOE data collection on education systems administered annually by UNESCO, the OECD and Eurostat for all OECD and partner countries. Available data from Argentina, China, India, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and South Africa are from the UNESCO Institute of Statistics (UIS). Additional provisional data on financial year 2021 were provided through a special questionnaire administered by the OECD and Eurostat in 2023.

For the 2019 reference year, due to a number of changes introduced in both the data sources and methodology used to calculate and compile Australia’s Finance collection, it is not possible to reproduce them in the trend file, resulting in a significant break in series. As a result of these changes, expenditure data from before the 2019 reference year is not comparable with previous years’ data.

For the 2020 reference year, Australia has updated its data sources and revised the methodology used to compile finance data, including household payments by fee paying students to private institutions and ECEC expenditure data. The ECEC expenditure data includes the period between 6 April 2020 and 12 July 2020 when the childcare subsidy system was paused to provide free childcare in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, roughly three months of data is absent in the 2020 data compared to the 2019 data. Moreover, additional data from the COVID-19 support payments made in 2020 calendar year is included, noting that this data is not directly linked to individual children. As there is no precise way to split payment amounts by child age, age profiles have been approximated by apportioning based on a pre-COVID reference period, specifically the fortnight ending 1 March 2020. Further, a historical revision to non-government schools was implemented in Australia's 2020-21 Government Finance Statistics annual data, resulting in changes of data at ISCED levels 1, 23 and 34. Non-government schools previously classified as non-profit institutions serving households have been re-classified to private, non-financial corporations from the calendar year 1985. This reclassification also necessitates a change to the transactions between commonwealth and state governments and non-government schools. Caution should be taken if comparing data for the reference years 2019 and 2020.

Expenditure on vocational programmes (ISCED 2 to 4) and short-cycle tertiary programmes (ISCED 5) is underestimated since expenditure data for private vocational institutions is incomplete. It is likely that private institutions receive most of their funding from household direct expenditure and these institutions enrol more than half of all students at these levels. Hence, the main effect of not having this data is likely to be that household expenditure is underestimated at these levels. While most finance data has been apportioned across ISCED levels using UOE enrolment data as a proxy, there are some cases where specific enrolment data is used to apportion expenditure on a particular segment of the sector.

Public expenditure on education by the Health ministry is generally reported on ISCED level 4. Besides, some very small programmes were regrouped according to the centre of gravity of the institutions in charge of the provision.

French and Flemish Communities differ in the type of expenditure reported. While the French Community refer to actual expenditure data, the Flemish Community refer to budgeted accrual expenditure data. Prior to 2016, private expenditure was slightly underestimated since data on payments to independent private institutions were not collected/not available. Change in the share of public, private and international expenditure on educational institutions are influenced by the integration of independent private institutions since the school year 2016-2017 as well as by the creation of short-cycle tertiary (ISCED-5) programmes in 2009-2010 in the Flemish Community. In the Flemish Community, ISCED-5 programmes (with the exception of Nursing) were relocated from centres for adult education to colleges for higher education starting in 2019-2020. This relocation had a number of ramifications, ranging from students becoming eligible for study allowances and student services to changes in how the programmes are funded.

Expenditure on “Primary, secondary and post-secondary non-tertiary education” and on “Primary to Tertiary education” does not include expenditure on post-secondary non-tertiary education.

Until the 2021 Education at Glance edition, Chile used the Central Bank report of private expenditure in education, but during 2022, the Central Bank only has at its disposal the expenditure of independent private schools (ISCED 0-3). Which made imperative to add another source of information, such as: “Accountability of Establishments” from the Superintendence of Education (SIE) for public and private institutions dependent of the government and reported income from the Superintendence of Higher Education (SES) for tertiary institutions. This methodological change might difficult the comparability of the indicator previously to 2022 Education at Glance.

There has been significant change in classification of institutions since year 2017. Major part of ISCED 0-3 independent private institutions were classified as government-dependent private institutions due to core funding received from government agencies. Government-dependent private universities (ISCED 6-8) were classified as public universities due to overall control criteria. These changes lead to non-compatibility by type of institution between year 2016 and year 2017. Due to differences in the source of data and methodological changes, trend data for years 2014-2016 are not totally comparable with previous years information. Since 2017, there is additional change of data source for public universities that make up large part of expenditure of tertiary education in Estonia. In addition, private component of expenditure on education is underestimated as methodology to include data for payments outside educational institutions and scholarships/grants to households and students has yet to be developed.

Government transfers to private entities for apprenticeship training are included as government direct expenditure on educational institutions, which is therefore overestimated, whereas government transfers to the private sector are underestimated. Expenditure on education not leading to a formal degree or qualification is also not included.

The expenses and number of students from CPGE, BTS enrolled in “lycées” are reported at the tertiary education level.

Payments of private entities to independent private institutions is only partially covered. As a consequence, the total private expenditure on educational institutions and the total public and private expenditure on educational institutions are underestimated.

Expenditure by non-profit institutions of own sources is not included as well as other minor expenditure items: Expenditure in non-university schools attached to hospitals for training of nurses and other para-medical professionals, expenditure on vocational schools of the Israeli Defence Forces. Scholarships not attributable to tuition were excluded from tuition. From 2012, the "Yeshiva" has been classified at upper secondary – General schools (ISCED 3). The students of Hebrew teaching, adult courses, training courses and supplementary training for adults, supervised by the ministry of economy and industry, were classified in ISCED5. Some minor expenditure items were excluded from the data collection (e.g. Expenditures on education from international sources, expenditure in non-university schools attached to hospitals from training of nurses and certain other para-medical professionals, expenditure in vocational schools of the Israeli Defence Forces).

High School Tuition Support Fund have commenced in April 2010. This system supports funds for students to reduce the burden of household educational costs. Refund is unnecessary. In addition, in April 2014 the central government started giving subsidies to the local governments, which support high school students who are in a sudden change of household budget and/or who try to re-enter high school despite experiencing the dropout of school in the past.

Expenditure on some educational programmes provided by ministries other than the Ministry of Education is excluded (police college, polytechnic college, military academy, etc.) There were some significant changes in the methodology used in data collection. For financial year 2014, Korea mapped undistributed programmes, which included municipal and national expenditure by the Ministry of Education, to ISCED 0-8 levels (mainly to ISCED 0-3). Since the financial year 2015, Korea has removed 'carryover' and 'reserve fund' from the previous year for the all education levels. Due to differences in the methodology adopted in 2015 fiscal year, trend data are reported as missing as they would not be comparable. For the financial year 2019, the decrease in government expenditure (G5) at the tertiary level is resulted from the limitation in the data collection method, not the reduction of government expenditure in real terms. The government subsidies for some R&D projects of the reference year had not been paid during the reference period defined in the UOE FINANCE questionnaire owing to the difference in the accounting period between the educational institutions and the government agencies. Therefore, attention is required when interpreting the time series data of the corresponding figures.

Expenditure in primary, lower secondary (general and vocational), upper secondary (general and vocational) and post-secondary non-tertiary education levels are estimated by breaking down the aggregated figures based on the number of full-time equivalent students enrolled in general and vocational programmes at the corresponding ISCED level. Household payments outside education institutions are estimated using Household Budget Survey data and Consumer price indices.

Data refers to budget expenditure instead of actual expenditure. A new method is used since EAG 2020 to calculate household expenditure on education. Accordingly, expenditure data from 2018 onwards should not be compared with previous data.

Trend analysis of the private expenditures must be done with caution due to the different data sources used in different years. Moreover, due to changes in the method used to allocate expenditure on education across ISCED level 2 and above, 2020 data should not be compared with previous years.

Total expenditure on education from international sources does not include direct expenditure on private institutions, As a result of the structural reform of the polish education system started in the school year 2017/18, data for ISCED levels 1-3 for year 2017 are not fully comparable with those of previous years. Due to the change in the budget classification, data for ISCED levels 6-8 since 2019 have included expenditure on higher education and science.

Break in time series: after 2014 Romania implemented a new methodology following the ISCED 2011 international classification and the European Commission Regulation 912/2013 resulting in an improved breakdown of expenditure by level of education. Starting with reference year 2015, the coverage of private expenditure improved thanks to the data on education expenditure from the Household Budget Survey (HBS) survey supplementary section.

Private expenditure - and hence total expenditure - are underestimated due to the lack of data on capital expenditure in private institutions and payments for private tutoring.

The allocation of expenditure on primary and lower secondary education (basic education in Slovenia) is estimated based on the proportion of teaching hours (according to curriculum). From 2018 redistribution of private expenditure for public institutions between household expenditure and expenditure of other non-educational private entities was made at ISCED levels 6-8 (in previous years also part of R&D expenditure was included in household payments to educational institutions). Expenditure of other non-educational private entities on educational institutions since 2018 include also expenditure related to mentoring practical education and training of students at the work place as part of their formal education programmes. Since 2019, this expenditure also include some rental revenues related to formal education that were not considered before. International expenditure for education (F20) since 2019 include EU part of funds, transferred to government, for scholarships and for subsidies to private organizations for mentoring practical education and training of students at the workplace. For previous years these EU funds were not considered separately (in F6); they were only included within government transfers to households and other private entities. From 2019, direct international expenditure for public, non-instructional educational institutions was reported within government expenditure.

From 2020, there is a break in the time series. The coverage of education institutions for UOE financial data has been supplemented. This change affected the volume of funds from various sources for/of public and private educational institutions; the highest increase in volume of funds was in budget funds for educational institutions (by about EUR 40 million in 2020), the largest part for institutions implementing programmes at the level of primary education. The estimated part of market revenues related to tuition fees for formal adult education programmes, in educational institutions that implement these programmes was additionally taken into account. This change affected the increase in private (households’) expenditure on educational institutions (by about EUR 72 million in 2020), mainly at the levels of upper secondary and tertiary education. The part of market revenues not considered as connected with formal education programmes or participation in formal education are not taken into account as a part of expenditure for formal education. Covid pandemic and measures related to it also affected the data on expenditure for formal education for 2020.

Private expenditure in upper secondary non-tertiary level and in short-cycle tertiary education are underestimated; as a consequence, at those ISCED levels total expenditure on educational institutions is underestimated as well. A new method is used since EAG 2019 to estimate the split of expenditure between general and vocational at ISCED 3. The new method is allocating a larger share of expenditures to the general programmes.

The source of households education expenditure which is Household Budget Survey has not been done during the year 2020, because of COVID-19 pandemic. Household education expenditure data for 2020 was estimated according to previous year.

Household expenditure is underestimated as no reliable estimate for payments outside educational institutions exists.

Private expenditure on vocational education is underestimated as no reliable estimate for payments from private companies on education exists, enrolment numbers are adjusted in accordance with this so pay per student figures in C1 are unaffected, but figures for C2 and C3 will be.

Expenditure on (as well as enrolment in) general and vocational education is based on the type of institution rather than type of course. Figures for general/academic education is based on spending on schools and higher education institutions, figures for vocational spending are based on spending on further education colleges.

See notes on Indicators C1 and C2.

For general information on methodology, please refer to the OECD Handbook for Internationally Comparative Education Statistics: Concepts, Standards, Definitions and Classifications (OECD, 2018[1]).

Detailed information on the source metadata and detailed comments on raw data are available in the StatLink (see StatLink below Table 3.1), worksheets METADATA and FIN1-SOURCE (education expenditure by source and destination).

Data on total public expenditure are based on the UOE data collection on education systems administered annually by UNESCO, the OECD and Eurostat for all OECD and partner countries. Available data from Argentina, China, India, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and South Africa are from the UNESCO Institute of Statistics (UIS).

Data on total government expenditure and government expenditure by function (COFOG) have been obtained from the OECD National Accounts Statistics Database.

For the 2019 reference year, due to a number of changes introduced in both the data sources and methodology used to calculate and compile Australia’s Finance collection, it is not possible to reproduce them in the trend file, resulting in a significant break in series. As a result of these changes, expenditure data from before the 2019 reference year is not comparable with previous years’ data.

For the 2020 reference year, Australia has updated its data sources and revised the methodology used to compile finance data, including household payments by fee paying students to private institutions and ECEC expenditure data. The ECEC expenditure data includes the period between 6 April 2020 and 12 July 2020 when the childcare subsidy system was paused to provide free childcare in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, roughly three months of data is absent in the 2020 data compared to the 2019 data. Moreover, additional data from the COVID-19 support payments made in 2020 calendar year is included, noting that this data is not directly linked to individual children. As there is no precise way to split payment amounts by child age, age profiles have been approximated by apportioning based on a pre-COVID reference period, specifically the fortnight ending 1 March 2020. Further, a historical revision to non-government schools was implemented in Australia's 2020-21 Government Finance Statistics annual data, resulting in changes of data at ISCED levels 1, 23 and 34. Non-government schools previously classified as non-profit institutions serving households have been re-classified to private, non-financial corporations from the calendar year 1985. This reclassification also necessitates a change to the transactions between commonwealth and state governments and non-government schools. Caution should be taken if comparing data for the reference years 2019 and 2020.

While most finance data has been apportioned across ISCED levels using UOE enrolment data as a proxy, there are some cases where specific enrolment data is used to apportion expenditure on a particular segment of the sector.

Public expenditure on education by the Health ministry is generally reported on ISCED level 4. Besides, some very small programmes were regrouped according to the centre of gravity of the institutions in charge of the provision.

Change in total public expenditure on education as a percentage of total government expenditure are influenced by the integration of independent private institutions since the school year 2016-2017 as well as by the creation of short-cycle tertiary programmes (ISCED-5) in 2009-2010 in the Flemish Community. In the Flemish Community, ISCED-5 programmes (with the exception of Nursing) were relocated from centres for adult education to colleges for higher education starting in 2019-2020. This relocation had a number of ramifications, ranging from students becoming eligible for study allowances and student services to changes in how the programmes are funded. The data for ISCED-5 only apply to the Flemish Community. The French Community reports ISCED-5 data under ISCED-6.

All tables and charts in Indicator C4 present information on public expenditure on public educational institutions instead of public expenditure on all educational institutions.

The pre-primary education data included in this indicator is comprised of pre-primary education delivered by Canadian primary schools. In some provinces, this will include one year only (kindergarten), while in others, it includes two (junior and senior kindergarten). Expenditure on “Primary, secondary and post-secondary non-tertiary education” and on “Primary to Tertiary education” does not include expenditure on post-secondary non-tertiary education. The Canadian Implementation of the Classification of Functions of Government (COFOG) excludes capital expenses. Total consolidated Canadian Government estimates do not include amounts from social security funds.

There has been significant change in classification of institutions since year 2017. Major part of ISCED 0-3 independent private institutions were classified as government-dependent private institutions due to core funding received from government agencies. Government-dependent private universities (ISCED 6-8) were classified as public universities due to overall control criteria. These changes lead to non-compatibility by type of institution between year 2016 and year 2017. Due to differences in the source of data and methodological changes, trend data for years 2014-2016 are not totally comparable with previous years information. Since 2017, there is additional change of data source for public universities that make up large part of expenditure of tertiary education in Estonia. In addition, private component of expenditure on education is underestimated as methodology to include data for payments outside educational institutions and scholarships/grants to households and students has yet to be developed.

Government transfers to private entities for apprenticeship training are included as government direct expenditure on educational institutions; therefore. Expenditure on education not leading to a formal degree or qualification is also not included.

The expenses and number of students from CPGE, BTS enrolled in “lycées” are reported at the tertiary education level.

ISCED 25 programmes are included with ISCED 35 programmes.

Ireland undertook a review of expenditure data that went as far back as 2015; therefore, data before 2015 cannot be compared to those of 2015 and after. In 2016 Ireland produced a modified GNI (GNI*) that was recommended by the Economic Statistics Review Group and is designed to exclude globalisation effects that are disproportionately impacting the measurement size of the Irish Economy.

Expenditure by non-profit institutions of own sources is not included as well as other minor expenditure items: Expenditure in non-university schools attached to hospitals for training of nurses and other para-medical professionals, expenditure on vocational schools of the Israeli Defence Forces. Scholarships not attributable to tuition were excluded from tuition. From 2012, the "Yeshiva" has been classified at upper secondary – General schools (ISCED 3). The students of Hebrew teaching, adult courses, training courses and supplementary training for adults, supervised by the ministry of economy and industry, were classified in ISCED5. Some minor expenditure items were excluded from the data collection (e.g. Expenditures on education from international sources, expenditure in non-university schools attached to hospitals from training of nurses and certain other para-medical professionals, expenditure in vocational schools of the Israeli Defence Forces).

Payments outside educational institutions are estimated on the basis of the annual Household Budget Survey (HBS). In 2014, the National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT) replaced the old HBS (carried out between 1997 and 2013) with a completely new HBS that differs deeply from the previous one. Therefore, a break in series occurred between 2014 and 2015 at tertiary level and between 2017 and 2018 at levels 0-4. All the indicators that include the aggregate “Payments outside educational institutions” are affected by these breaks in series. ISCED 4 vocational is included in ISCED 3.

High School Supplemental Scholarship Fund has commenced in April 2014. This system provides grants for supplemental educational costs apart from course tuition. Regional final funds include expenditures for independent private institutions by local final funds, and expenditures for local institutions by regional final funds are included in local final funds. Central transfers to regional governments include local initial funds, and regional and local final funds include each parts of these final funds. Estimates are included for a portion of the public finance education expenditures for early childhood education.

Expenditure on some educational programmes provided by ministries other than the Ministry of Education is excluded (police college, polytechnic college, military academy, etc.) There were some significant changes in the methodology used in data collection. For financial year 2014, Korea mapped undistributed programmes, which included municipal and national expenditure by the Ministry of Education, to ISCED 0-8 levels (mainly to ISCED 0-3). Since the financial year 2015, Korea has removed 'carryover' and 'reserve fund' from the previous year for the all education levels. Due to differences in the methodology adopted in 2015 fiscal year, trend data are reported as missing as they would not be comparable. For the financial year 2019, the decrease in government expenditure (G5) at the tertiary level is resulted from the limitation in the data collection method, not the reduction of government expenditure in real terms. The government subsidies for some R&D projects of the reference year had not been paid during the reference period defined in the UOE FINANCE questionnaire owing to the difference in the accounting period between the educational institutions and the government agencies. Therefore, attention is required when interpreting the time series data of the corresponding figures.

Expenditure in primary, lower secondary (general and vocational), upper secondary (general and vocational) and post-secondary non-tertiary education levels are estimated by breaking down the aggregated figures based on the number of full-time equivalent students enrolled in general and vocational programmes at the corresponding ISCED level. Household payments outside education institutions are estimated using Household Budget Survey data and Consumer price indices.

At the tertiary level, Luxembourg spends more than half of public budget to fund Luxembourgish students studying abroad. As public funds devoted to students abroad are not taken into account in Chapter C, expenditure on tertiary education as a percentage of GDP and of total government expenditure is largely underestimated.

Data refers to budget expenditure instead of actual expenditure.

Trend analysis of the private expenditures must be done with caution due to the different data sources used in different years. Moreover, due to changes in the method used to allocate expenditure on education across ISCED level 2 and above, 2020 data should not be compared with previous years.

Total expenditure on education from international sources does not include direct expenditure on private institutions. As from year 2016, methodological changes have been introduced in order to improve the calculation of initial funds from central government. Accordingly, data on net transfers to local governments since year 2016 are not fully comparable with those of previous years. In addition, as a result of the structural reform of the polish education system started in the school year 2017/18, data for ISCED levels 1-3 for year 2017 are not fully comparable with those of previous years. Due to the change in the budget classification, data for ISCED levels 6-8 since 2019 have included expenditure on higher education and science.

Break in time series: after 2014 Romania implemented a new methodology following the ISCED 2011 international classification and the European Commission Regulation 912/2013 resulting in an improved breakdown of expenditure by level of education. Starting with reference year 2015, the coverage of private expenditure improved thanks to the data on education expenditure from the HBS survey supplementary section.

Private expenditure - and hence total expenditure - are underestimated due to the lack of data on capital expenditure in private institutions and payments for private tutoring.

The allocation of expenditure on primary and lower secondary education (basic education in Slovenia) is estimated based on the proportion of teaching hours (according to curriculum). From 2018 on some public transfers to private sector that were not included in previous years are considered as part of public expenditure on education. Therefore, data on public transfers to private sector and on public expenditure on formal education from 2018 are not directly comparable to those for previous years.

From 2020, there is a break in the time series. The coverage of education institutions for UOE financial data has been supplemented. This change affected the volume of funds from various sources for/of public and private educational institutions; the highest increase in volume of funds was in budget funds for educational institutions (by about EUR 40 million in 2020), the largest part for institutions implementing programmes at the level of primary education. The estimated part of market revenues related to tuition fees for formal adult education programmes, in educational institutions that implement these programmes was additionally taken into account. This change affected the increase in private (households’) expenditure on educational institutions (by about EUR 72 million in 2020), mainly at the levels of upper secondary and tertiary education. The part of market revenues not considered as connected with formal education programmes or participation in formal education are not taken into account as a part of expenditure for formal education. Covid pandemic and measures related to it also affected the data on expenditure for formal education for 2020.

A new method is used since EAG 2019 to estimate the split of expenditure between general and vocational at ISCED 3. The new method is allocating a larger share of expenditures to the general programmes.

Expenditure on (as well as enrolment in) general and vocational education is based on the type of institution rather than type of course. Figures for general/academic education is based on spending on schools and higher education institutions, figures for vocational spending are based on spending on further education colleges.

This indicator was not included in EAG 2023.

The salary cost of teachers per student (SCS) is calculated as:

$S C S = T e a c h e r s a l a r y * I n s t r u c t i o n t i m e * \frac{1}{T e a c h i n g t i m e} * \frac{1}{T h e o r e t i c a l C l a s s S i z e}$

Where theoretical class size is calculated as:

$T h e o r e t i c a l c l a s s s i z e = \frac{I n s t r u c t i o n t i m e}{T e a c h i n g t i m e} * \frac{S t u d e n t s}{T e a c h e r s}$

The contribution of each factor to the level of the salary cost of teachers per student is analysed by comparing the salary cost of teachers per student in each country to the OECD average then calculating the contribution of these different factors to the variation from the OECD average. This exercise is based on a mathematical relationship between the various factors and follows the method presented in the Canadian publication Education Statistics Bulletin. Using this mathematical relationship and comparing a country’s values for the four factors to the OECD averages makes it possible to measure both the direct and indirect contribution of each of these four factors to the variation in salary cost per student between that country and the OECD average.

[1] OECD (2018), OECD Handbook for Internationally Comparative Education Statistics 2018: Concepts, Standards, Definitions and Classifications, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264304444-en.

METADATA	General information on the data collected through the UOE Finance questionnaire
FIN_STUDENTS	Number of students with coverage adjusted to statistics on educational finance by type of institution
FIN1_SOURCE	Educational expenditure by level of education, source and destination
FIN2_NATURE	Education expenditure by level of education, type of institution and nature

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