The secretary General of the UN, Antonio Guterres recently made a call for governments to increase spending on education. The reality today is far from this expectation. According to a new joint World Bank – UNESCO report, Education Finance Watch some two-thirds of low- and lower-middle-income countries have cut their public education budgets since the start of the pandemic. However, in this Unesco article, we see that only one-third of upper-middle and high-income countries have reduced their budgets, so the gap between these two extremes is widening. As the report goes on to say, the “deterioration in government finances over the medium term suggests that without concerted efforts to prioritize education, the outlook for mobilizing the required resources for education will worsen”. Failure to address this shortfall – both domestically and by supporting developing nations – will be a catastrophe for economies the world over. This needs to be a priority for the future and the growth of each country and the education of its people.
