Education as a Strategic Investment Conference

Prepared by Tony Levitas and Marko Paunovic

Belgrade, February 14th 2009

Before we begin…Richard Riley, US Secretary of Education under President

Clinton believes that 1o most demanded jobs in 2010 have not even existed in 2004If that is true, our education system needs to prepare our

children for jobs that to not even exist!To be able to do that, significant institutional changes are

needed……but the only public debate on education policy in Serbia

is about teacher wages.Which does not leave to much room for optimism.

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Outline of Presentation

The Current System of Education Finance in Serbia

The major problems

Why introduce per capita financing?

Select Experiences of other Eastern Europe Countries

Concluding Thoughts

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Basic Characteristics of the existing system

Responsibility for financing pre-university education is shared between the national government and local governments. (c. 80% - 20%)

Local governments are responsible for financing all the costs of non mandatory kindergartens and operating costs of primary and secondary schools.

The national government finances the wages in primary and secondary schools and mandatory kindergarten.

Investment costs are “shared”, but the way of selecting investment projects is unclear and not transparent

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Spending on pre-university education as share of GDP in Serbia (above 3 %) is slightly below the OECD average (3,7%) in 2005.

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Basic Characteristics of the existing system

Results do not match the expenditures

Primary problem is not in total spending, but in the way the money is spentBad separation of power and centralized systemThere are no financial incentives

Good teachers and principals can not be rewarded… And bad ones can not be punished

Largest share of budget is spent on wages Which are maybe low But the number of people is high

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Problems – the system is unclear…

In theory, both the national government and local governments are supposed to allocate money to schools according to formulas based on objective criteria, such as number of classes taught, square meters of facility and type of heating fuel

But, in practice, these formula’s are not applied and school budgets are determined “historically”

This is a typical pattern for “post-communist” countries, due to the:

demographic decline;

fiscal stress;

and political weakness.

No clear rules on class sizes.7

…inefficient…

Over 1000 satellite schools with less the 20 pupils, of which more than 90% in Central Serbia

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…and inequitable.

These spending patterns cannot be fully explained by objective factors such as the additional costs of teaching ethnic minorities in their native language.

Also, large number of small “expensive” schools in Central Serbia makes this result even more interesting , because it would be expected that per student spending is higher in Central Serbia 9

• There are large differences in spending per student across regions

Why is it so?Because the system is set in such a way that no one knows

who is responsible for the student’s knowledge (or lack of it)? Teacher, principal, superintendant, ministry?

Teachers are not motivatedIt is very difficult to reward good teachersIt is difficult to retain good teachers in educationWhich means that young people do not want to be teachers

Parents are marginalizedOther participants (such as principals) have no particular

reason to work harder, nor do they have mechanisms to solve problems

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How did other countries set up the responsibility system?

Per capita financing is a standard practice in most OECD countries

It creates a direct link between the purpose of the activity –teaching students– and the financial resources devoted to that activity.

Facilitates the decentralization of managerial and financial responsibilities which allows easier problem solving at the local level

Combined with open school districting it can facilitate competition between schools

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Some other reasons

Can be used to facilitate private sector involvement in the education system, which is good both for teachers and students.

Can be used to correct the inefficiencies and inequities of systems

But the same reasons driving the move towards per capita funding in “post communist” Europe make it difficult to introduce.

Existing disparities in per pupil funding mean that the introduction of a per capita funding formula’s exerts financial pressure on “high” cost schools to reduce employment, or to close.

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Important question – who gets the money?

One of the key decisions: Should the formula allocate money from the national government

to schools (decentralization to schools)? Or should the formula allocate money to local governments, who

then allocate it to schools (decentralization to local governments)?

It is a political decision because: If decentralization to schools, than the national government must

deal with the adjustment problem. If to local governments, then adjustment is their problem.

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Experiences in Eastern Europe – transfers to local level

Poland and Hungary have decentralized education finance and management to local governments. Local Governments can supplement their weighted per pupil education

grants with their own revenues and they allocate education funds to schools as they see fit.

Has not eliminated the small school problem, but has made it “manageable”.

In both, under the voter pressure, local governments now make considerable contributions to the education system from their own revenues; for investments, additional teaching hours, bonuses.

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Experiences in Eastern Europe – transfers to local level

In both countries school districts are open, promoting competition and quality

In Poland, local government must give private schools the same amount in per pupil funding as they receive from the national government.

In Poland the national government is considering legislation that would require local governments to develop local formulas for allocating money across schools

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Experiences in other similar countries

Georgia and Armenia moved directly to the per capita funding of schools. Systems crashed and burned as urban schools overfunded, rural

schools bankrupted.

Lithuania has introduced an interesting compromise Local Governments receive a weighted per capita grant from the

national government. But they are required to allocate to 80% of the grant to schools

according to same rules as the grant to them. 20% they can allocate as they see fit.

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Concluding ThoughtsSerbia has increasingly profound problems with equity and

efficiency of its education and management system.Per capita funding is part of the solution.But per capita funding should be considered within the larger

context of whether it will be the national government or local governments who will be held responsible for :

managing school networks; allocating labor in the system; making investment decisions; and dealing with adjustment costs now, and failed schools in the future.

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