Independent rankings built from public data — every figure traceable to the body that published it.
Report year 1971Data year 1971
Government expenditure on education (% of GDP)Higher is better — rank 1 leadsPublished by UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS)
51 editions (1971–2023), 51 to 174 countries. What share of its economy a government spends on education. ⚠ A COMMITMENT MEASURE, NOT AN OUTCOME — it says what goes in, not what comes out, and the enrolment and completion rates on this site are where the results show up. ⚠ It is a share of GDP, so a poor country can rank above a rich one while spending far less per child in absolute terms; `education-spending-per-student` is the per-child view. Treating a higher share as better is the conventional reading and the one used here, but a very high figure sometimes reflects a small or shrinking economy rather than generosity. ⚠ Editions reporting fewer than 50 countries are not written — that drops UIS’s trailing stub year, which opens with a handful of early reporters, and any thin historical year. ⚠ UIS ranks nobody, so no rank is stored; the POSITION on the statistics page is derived here by ordering the score and labelled as ours.
Government Spending on Education 1971 — UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS)
Cite as: UNESCO Institute for Statistics. UIS Data Browser. Montreal: UNESCO Institute for Statistics.
Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0
UIS release 20260507-91260335. Read from the UIS API at full precision, as published — nothing is rounded here. ⚠ Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0, so anything derived from it carries the same ShareAlike obligation. UIS publishes no rank, so none is stored and none is derived here.
54 rows × 3 columns · imported from the publisher’s published data file on
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| Country | ISO Code | Government expenditure on education (% of GDP) |
|---|---|---|
| Canada | CAN | 7.684 |
| Puerto Rico | PRI | 7.251 |
| Denmark | DNK | 6.393 |
| Netherlands | NLD | 6.319 |
| Malta | MLT | 6.152 |
| Barbados | BRB | 6.151 |
| Zambia | ZMB | 6.095 |
| Republic of the Congo | COG | 5.551 |
| Finland | FIN | 5.331 |
| Kiribati | KIR | 5.276 |
| United Kingdom | GBR | 5.032 |
| Brunei | BRN | 4.995 |
| Lesotho | LSO | 4.642 |
| Malaysia | MYS | 4.551 |
| Egypt | EGY | 4.530 |
| Ireland | IRL | 4.486 |
| Botswana | BWA | 4.387 |
| Austria | AUT | 4.299 |
| Ghana | GHA | 4.224 |
| Venezuela | VEN | 4.180 |
| Seychelles | SYC | 4.066 |
| Kenya | KEN | 3.930 |
| South Korea | KOR | 3.701 |
| Japan | JPN | 3.579 |
| Switzerland | CHE | 3.496 |
| Hungary | HUN | 3.425 |
| Solomon Islands | SLB | 3.400 |
| Panama | PAN | 3.354 |
| Jordan | JOR | 3.298 |
| Kuwait | KWT | 3.287 |
| France | FRA | 3.208 |
| Uganda | UGA | 3.161 |
| Mauritius | MUS | 3.113 |
| Singapore | SGP | 3.110 |
| Cameroon | CMR | 3.080 |
| Thailand | THA | 3.066 |
| Qatar | QAT | 3.000 |
| Italy | ITA | 2.892 |
| Luxembourg | LUX | 2.855 |
| Iran | IRN | 2.770 |
| Nicaragua | NIC | 2.492 |
| Hong Kong | HKG | 2.368 |
| Bahrain | BHR | 2.308 |
| Paraguay | PRY | 2.265 |
| Guatemala | GTM | 2.026 |
| Spain | ESP | 1.891 |
| Ecuador | ECU | 1.879 |
| Bhutan | BTN | 1.876 |
| Tanzania | TZA | 1.724 |
| Pakistan | PAK | 1.654 |
| China | CHN | 1.387 |
| Greece | GRC | 1.321 |
| Ethiopia | ETH | 1.198 |
| Niger | NER | 1.052 |