Modelling efficiency in education: How are European countries spending their budgets and what relation between money and performance

Abstract

Aggregate expenditure in education was compared to PISA’s scores (2012) as a mean of understanding how money link to performance. We analysed global education expenditure, teachers’ pay, class size and number of teaching hours, infrastructure and teaching resources investment in European countries. Four groups of efficiency / effectiveness are proposed based on the combination of expense versus results. The author concludes that the most effective countries are Poland, Slovenia and Czech Republic, as they achieve top results with moderate investment. There are also some countries where desired score is achieved, though a lot of money is being spent. The remaining countries do not achieve desired scores and therefore are neither efficient nor effective, though Sweden and Norway spend a lot of money for very poor results, and are therefore the most inefficient countries.