Independent rankings built from public data — every figure traceable to the body that published it.
Report year 1986Data year 1986
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 1986 — 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.
60 rows × 3 columns · imported from the publisher’s published data file on
Select any column heading to sort by it; select it again to reverse.
| Country | ISO Code | Government expenditure on education (% of GDP) |
|---|---|---|
| Seychelles | SYC | 9.130 |
| Malaysia | MYS | 7.243 |
| Ecuador | ECU | 6.872 |
| Saudi Arabia | SAU | 6.255 |
| Canada | CAN | 6.021 |
| Kenya | KEN | 6.014 |
| Tunisia | TUN | 5.879 |
| Denmark | DNK | 5.860 |
| Israel | ISR | 5.831 |
| Angola | AGO | 5.723 |
| Syria | SYR | 5.623 |
| Netherlands | NLD | 5.553 |
| Norway | NOR | 5.540 |
| Austria | AUT | 5.522 |
| Kuwait | KWT | 5.401 |
| Ireland | IRL | 5.301 |
| Australia | AUS | 5.269 |
| Morocco | MAR | 5.259 |
| Botswana | BWA | 5.186 |
| Finland | FIN | 5.102 |
| Belgium | BEL | 4.852 |
| France | FRA | 4.748 |
| Hungary | HUN | 4.736 |
| Italy | ITA | 4.644 |
| Jamaica | JAM | 4.604 |
| Saint Vincent and the Grenadines | VCT | 4.429 |
| Costa Rica | CRI | 4.420 |
| United Kingdom | GBR | 4.381 |
| Switzerland | CHE | 4.210 |
| Saint Lucia | LCA | 4.155 |
| Oman | OMN | 3.793 |
| Luxembourg | LUX | 3.790 |
| Iran | IRN | 3.570 |
| South Korea | KOR | 3.541 |
| Cyprus | CYP | 3.489 |
| Gambia | GMB | 3.485 |
| Mauritius | MUS | 3.437 |
| New Zealand | NZL | 3.430 |
| Thailand | THA | 3.408 |
| Ghana | GHA | 3.354 |
| Panama | PAN | 3.346 |
| Zambia | ZMB | 3.339 |
| Jordan | JOR | 3.284 |
| Malta | MLT | 3.106 |
| Uruguay | URY | 3.103 |
| Portugal | PRT | 3.049 |
| Cameroon | CMR | 2.848 |
| Sri Lanka | LKA | 2.805 |
| Pakistan | PAK | 2.678 |
| Mali | MLI | 2.435 |
| Central African Republic | CAF | 2.208 |
| Malawi | MWI | 2.198 |
| Ethiopia | ETH | 2.086 |
| China | CHN | 2.058 |
| Greece | GRC | 1.859 |
| Philippines | PHL | 1.517 |
| Türkiye | TUR | 1.510 |
| Bangladesh | BGD | 1.343 |
| Argentina | ARG | 1.262 |
| DR Congo | COD | 0.723 |