Independent rankings built from public data — every figure traceable to the body that published it.
Report year 1996Data year 1996
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 1996 — 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.
77 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) |
|---|---|---|
| Moldova | MDA | 9.897 |
| Denmark | DNK | 7.891 |
| Jordan | JOR | 7.477 |
| Seychelles | SYC | 7.311 |
| Norway | NOR | 7.138 |
| Finland | FIN | 6.866 |
| Sweden | SWE | 6.834 |
| New Zealand | NZL | 6.384 |
| Tunisia | TUN | 6.288 |
| Poland | POL | 6.233 |
| Estonia | EST | 6.055 |
| Kuwait | KWT | 5.860 |
| France | FRA | 5.781 |
| Latvia | LVA | 5.417 |
| Austria | AUT | 5.289 |
| Iceland | ISL | 5.218 |
| Portugal | PRT | 5.065 |
| South Africa | ZAF | 5.047 |
| Saudi Arabia | SAU | 4.944 |
| Eswatini | SWZ | 4.938 |
| Switzerland | CHE | 4.923 |
| Malaysia | MYS | 4.914 |
| Kyrgyzstan | KGZ | 4.903 |
| Lithuania | LTU | 4.818 |
| Ireland | IRL | 4.754 |
| Egypt | EGY | 4.672 |
| Netherlands | NLD | 4.485 |
| Germany | DEU | 4.478 |
| Spain | ESP | 4.460 |
| Italy | ITA | 4.440 |
| Panama | PAN | 4.394 |
| United Kingdom | GBR | 4.378 |
| Hungary | HUN | 4.319 |
| North Macedonia | MKD | 4.303 |
| Czechia | CZE | 4.219 |
| Slovakia | SVK | 4.085 |
| Burundi | BDI | 4.083 |
| Kazakhstan | KAZ | 3.924 |
| Costa Rica | CRI | 3.891 |
| Argentina | ARG | 3.732 |
| Syria | SYR | 3.699 |
| Malawi | MWI | 3.698 |
| Jamaica | JAM | 3.678 |
| Iran | IRN | 3.538 |
| Azerbaijan | AZE | 3.513 |
| Thailand | THA | 3.500 |
| Luxembourg | LUX | 3.477 |
| Sri Lanka | LKA | 3.344 |
| Trinidad and Tobago | TTO | 3.249 |
| Romania | ROU | 3.241 |
| Togo | TGO | 3.125 |
| Peru | PER | 3.119 |
| Albania | ALB | 3.050 |
| Belgium | BEL | 3.049 |
| Philippines | PHL | 2.944 |
| Uruguay | URY | 2.870 |
| Pakistan | PAK | 2.811 |
| Oman | OMN | 2.796 |
| Chile | CHL | 2.777 |
| Hong Kong | HKG | 2.728 |
| Côte d’Ivoire | CIV | 2.725 |
| Ethiopia | ETH | 2.707 |
| Gambia | GMB | 2.566 |
| Laos | LAO | 2.430 |
| Bulgaria | BGR | 2.230 |
| Niger | NER | 2.144 |
| Lebanon | LBN | 2.085 |
| Tajikistan | TJK | 2.043 |
| Armenia | ARM | 1.848 |
| China | CHN | 1.843 |
| Tanzania | TZA | 1.744 |
| Eritrea | ERI | 1.639 |
| Guatemala | GTM | 1.564 |
| Burkina Faso | BFA | 1.440 |
| Dominican Republic | DOM | 1.227 |
| Monaco | MCO | 1.082 |
| Indonesia | IDN | 1.079 |