Investing in education 2023, a report prepared by the European Commission in the context of the European Education Area, discusses previous key European trends in supporting education and provides key discussion points for the future development of the sector.
The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered the biggest disruption of our economies and societies in decades. The subsequent recovery brought substantial opportunities as well as challenges to investment in the education sector. With the Recovery and Resilience Facility, Member States have at their disposal significant investment support in education and skills worth more than EUR 70 billion. In addition, cohesion policy funding will contribute considerably to investment in quality education in the coming years. Investments focus on digital education to strengthen the resilience of our education systems.
However, the latest data presented in this report show that national investment in education has not fully kept pace with the EU’s strong economic recovery in 2021. Addressing all current economic and social challenges in the EU, including the digital and green transitions and the new geopolitical dimension, will require major public investment in several economic sectors, while keeping public finances under control. This is likely to translate into increasing competition for public funding between different policy areas, with the potential risk of less funding available for education in the coming years. Potential funding competition coincides with calls to improve the overall quality of investment in education.
The main point of the report highlights that:
- Both opportunities and challenges for investment in education will depend mainly on its ability to ensure good learning outcomes. On the one hand, EU Member States have at their disposal substantial support for investment in education and skills in 2021-2026, through the Recovery and Resilience Facility, as well as cohesion policy funding. On the other hand, competition for public funding between different policy sectors is likely to increase. As data on public expenditure is only available until 2021, it still excludes the financial impact for the period 2022-2023 of various measures aimed at tackling the energy crisis and supporting Ukraine following the Russian invasion. High-quality investment in education can improve learning outcomes, improve economic growth and help increase the sustainability of public finances.
- The relationship between investment in education and learning outcomes is complex and there is no optimal level of investment in education. The increase in expenditure is associated with better scores in international tests, but the relationship is not linear and becomes weaker at higher levels of expenditure. This complex relationship between expenditure and learning outcomes at macro level is supported at micro level capable of identifying the causal effects of policy interventions.
- Research requires more experimentation and policy evaluation in the EU. While EU countries are quite diverse when it comes to combining the efficiency and effectiveness of learning outcomes, efficiency considerations must always go hand in hand with the objective of effectiveness in order to be relevant for education policy-making. Building on previous collaboration with Member States, the Commission launched a learning laboratory on investing in quality education and training in November 2022. The Learning Lab is a programme of activities aimed at promoting an evaluation culture in education in the EU and providing knowledge and resources to identify how education systems can contribute to better results. The activities will cover three main areas: capacity building on evaluation methodologies; collaboration between Member States; analysis and evaluation of education policies