Independent rankings built from public data — every figure traceable to the body that published it.
Report year 1987Data year 1987
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 1987 — 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) |
|---|---|---|
| Malaysia | MYS | 6.326 |
| Canada | CAN | 6.298 |
| Botswana | BWA | 6.118 |
| Denmark | DNK | 6.091 |
| Netherlands | NLD | 5.889 |
| Eswatini | SWZ | 5.802 |
| Norway | NOR | 5.788 |
| Ireland | IRL | 5.529 |
| Japan | JPN | 5.488 |
| Austria | AUT | 5.397 |
| Nicaragua | NIC | 5.352 |
| Israel | ISR | 5.256 |
| Finland | FIN | 5.203 |
| Morocco | MAR | 5.162 |
| Angola | AGO | 5.059 |
| Australia | AUS | 5.058 |
| South Africa | ZAF | 4.754 |
| France | FRA | 4.663 |
| Hungary | HUN | 4.631 |
| Belgium | BEL | 4.577 |
| Syria | SYR | 4.562 |
| United Kingdom | GBR | 4.372 |
| Switzerland | CHE | 4.166 |
| Iran | IRN | 4.141 |
| Luxembourg | LUX | 4.083 |
| Venezuela | VEN | 3.928 |
| New Zealand | NZL | 3.917 |
| Panama | PAN | 3.870 |
| Oman | OMN | 3.656 |
| Rwanda | RWA | 3.506 |
| Cyprus | CYP | 3.449 |
| Togo | TGO | 3.341 |
| Ghana | GHA | 3.307 |
| Jordan | JOR | 3.297 |
| South Korea | KOR | 3.279 |
| Malta | MLT | 3.165 |
| Portugal | PRT | 3.158 |
| Spain | ESP | 3.130 |
| Thailand | THA | 3.116 |
| Mauritius | MUS | 3.017 |
| Pakistan | PAK | 2.977 |
| Cameroon | CMR | 2.931 |
| Chile | CHL | 2.779 |
| Zambia | ZMB | 2.662 |
| Brunei | BRN | 2.654 |
| Sri Lanka | LKA | 2.644 |
| Saint Kitts and Nevis | KNA | 2.641 |
| Central African Republic | CAF | 2.548 |
| Malawi | MWI | 2.422 |
| Greece | GRC | 1.860 |
| China | CHN | 1.801 |
| Bangladesh | BGD | 1.514 |
| Argentina | ARG | 1.282 |
| DR Congo | COD | 0.861 |