Brazil invests less in education than OECD countries

Brazil invests less in education than the countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), according to the Education at a Glance 2023 report, released Tuesday (Sep. 12). The document brings together data from the group’s member and partner nations, such as Brazil.

The study shows that, while Brazil invested $4,306 per student in 2020, OECD countries invested an average of $11,560. The figures refer to investments made from elementary school to universities and colleges.

Investment in Brazil fell between 2019 and 2020. In the OECD, total government spending on schooling grew 2.1 percent between 2019 and 2020 on average, at a slower rate than total government spending on services, which was up 9.5 percent. In Brazil, total government spending on instruction went down 10.5 percent, while spending on all services increased 8.9 percent. According to the study, this may have been due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Adequate funding is a prerequisite for providing high-quality education,” the report reads. Most OECD countries invest between three and four percent of their gross domestic product in primary and secondary education. The percentage of Brazilian investment is not included in this edition of the report.

In this regard, the OECD remarks: “Investment in education as a percentage of the GDP is a measure of the priority that countries give to education, but it does not reflect the resources available in learning systems, since GDP levels vary between countries.”

Created by law, Brazil’s National Education Plan (PNE) mandates that the country must invest at least 10 percent of its GDP in education by 2024. As per the latest monitoring report of the law, carried out by the Anísio Teixeira National Institute for Educational Studies and Research (Inep), in 2022, Brazilian investment in education amounted to 5.5 percent of the GDP, and public investment in public instruction to five percent of the GDP. These results point to great difficulty on the part of the federal government, states, and municipalities in increasing the budget allocated to education, the text says.

The OECD report

Education at a Glance gathers information on the state of schooling around the world. It provides data on the structure, finances, and performance of systems in OECD countries and in the organization’s candidate and partner countries. The 2023 edition focuses on vocational learning and training.