Education Spending by Country

I guessed all of these. Only missed that second to last country, it was a bit of a surprise.

I was surprised there was no South Korea or Taiwan, and also from the absolute numbers no China

Interesting quiz, mostly as expected, Pity only Qatar uses oil money to at least one good end.

The two columns are separate, one for total spending and one per capita. Australia appears in the top 10 for both these lists

My guess is that ROK, Japan, and Singapore are lower down because of two things: larger class sizes and lower birthrates. As a result, they can wind up both paying teachers more and spending less per capita.

I'm sure that Saudi Arabia would make this list if they figured differently. Saudis (rightly) don't have much faith in their own country's public school system, or even university system, so.. many companies and institutions mandate that new hires go through lengthy training periods. Saudi Aramco, for example, puts all of their "apprentices," every one of their rigmen, firemen, electricians, engineers, pipe fitters, welders, secretaries, etc, through two full years of English, math, computer, driving, health, safety and other courses, and a year of technical courses and on the job training, before they even start their job. Teachers of these courses are foreigners that are very well paid (I was one of them). The companies that do this (Aramco, the armed forces, Ministry of Interior, etc) are all government entities using government money. The King Abdullah scholarship also sends thousands and thousands of Saudis overseas for university at great expense.

Most of the money that Qatar spends on education is probably to attract top researchers from other countries to come "work" at their universities just before they are about to make some big breakthrough... so that the Qatari university can then take credit for it. This happens a lot and all they have to attract these individuals, many of whom never actually do any work in Qatar, is large salaries.

We have the 4th highest spend in the world on education, but our education system is woeful and in desperate need of reform. Go figure.

Education is a popular thing to complain about all over the world. Solid enrage-everybody seminal political issue. It's probably not actually that bad.

Then I'll go against the flow and say that the educational system in Estonia is very well-organized.

The British education system is literally under attack from its own government, my kids school recently failed an inspection on tenuous grounds and a private company has moved in to manage it. The schools new CEO makes twice what the old head teacher ever did.

Where did Monaco rank? Is this another quiz where data is missing for lots of countries?

I wonder where the Vatican ranks...

Is there a single public school at the Vatican? I'm thinking not.

As a Brazilian and mainly as a teacher I'm shocked to learn that Brazil is the 6th country that most invests in education in the world, 150 Billion US Dollars per year. And yet, if you visit any public school in Brasil, any of the three schools where I work you'd wonder in surprise where is all that money...Classrooms with no air conditioning, not even a fan, under the absurd heat of 37º or so of my city (you sweat like a pig while teaching), old whiteboards, in such a bad shape that some parts can't be erased any more, sometimes there's no water to drink, sometimes there's no water to flush a fck toilet...A computer lab? We see them...in the movies. Absolutely ZERO electronic resources to enrich the class and engage our students. I' not saying that these figures are wrong. They are just OFFICIAL. The reality is very, very far from those U$ 150 Billion...

Well, most of it goes to the Federal University system.

And they mostly go to the wealthy

Kinda sad how many flaws are in the Irish education system. We spend far too much time on useless subjects that will never benefit us in any job aside from teaching...like Irish

I guess its not surprising that this includes almost all of the countries with the best quality of life. I'm going to say not a coincidence?

To me the pattern seems to be:

left column: large and/or populous industrialized countries.

right column: wealthy countries

How is China not on this???

Apparently they have missing data

Quotations from Chairman Mao is inexpensive to print and contains all the knowledge you'll ever need to know.

I was guessing every European country first and ended up getting 1 wrong. Don't be so shy and elusive, switzerland!