A National Education Account aims to produce the data needed to track the flows of education financing and target resources where they are needed most. Some benefits of implementing NEA at country level include generating data to inform policy making processes, reporting and accountability.

1. Global Partnership for Education
Webinar on National Education Account
Ousmane Diouf and Said Voffal
International Institute for Educational Planning(IIEP)
and UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS)
1st September 2016

2. SDG 4 and Education 2030
• Sustainable Development Goal no.4:
Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and
promote lifelong learning opportunities for all
• Education 2030 Framework for Action:
‘Education expenditure per student by level of education
and source of funding’
 Implies coverage of all sources of financing (government,
households and international) and a disaggregation, at a minimum,
by level of education.

3. The availability of education financing data at
international level is insufficient
Why?
-Data does not exist at national
level
-Data exists but not easily
accessible
-Data exists but requires
significant processing and
estimations to be usable
-Data requires additional
manipulations to fit into
internationally comparable
categories
-Reporting data at international
level is not a priority for
countries

4. UNESCO NEA project
– 8 countries: Guinea, Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Lao
PDR, Nepal, Viet Nam
– All using National Education Accounts framework
– Started in September 2013, will end July 2016

5. National Education Accounts(NEA): what is it?
• Comprehensive education finance data collection and analysis
exercise covering:
– Who finances education?
– How much do they spend?
– Where do the funds go?
– What are the funds being spent on?

6. Origins of NEA
System of National Accounts
(SNA)
Sector/Satellite Accounts
National Health Accounts
National Education Accounts
• International (UN) standards to measure
the whole economy of a country (ex. to
measure GDP)
• Produced/agreed by IMF, EU, OECD, UN
and World Bank
• National initiatives: France since the
1970s, Portugal, the Philippines,
Thailand
• UNESCO IIEP: Benin, Dominican
Republic, Mauritania, Madagascar in
the 1990s, Kenya in 2012
• USAID
o Creative Associates: 4 states in
Nigeria, Morocco
o RTI International: El Salvador
• World Bank: Turkey
National Education Accounts
UNESCO-GPE-
project

7. 1. General
government
-Central, state,
local
2. Private sector
-Households,
corporations,
nonprofit
3. Rest of the world
-Grants, loans
Administrative
offices
General
administration and
organization of the
system
TertiaryUpper-
secondary
Educational
institutions:
1. Public
2. Private
Teaching activities
Object of
expenditures
Ancillary services
Object of
expenditures
Connected goods and
services
1. Transport
2. Uniforms
3. Schools books and
teaching materials
4. Private tuition/extra
classes
Pre-
primary
Primary
Lower-
secondary
TVET
Producing
units
Activities
Economic
transaction
Financing
units
1. Teaching staff
compensation
2. Non-teaching staff
compensation
3. School books and
learning materials
4. Other goods and
services
5. Gross capital
formation
6. Ancillary services
Transfers
Level of
education
A coherent accounting framework around 5 dimensions

8. Financing
units
Financing
tables
Producing
(income &
expenditures)
tables
Producing
units
(education
providers)
Data
collection
Synthesis
tables
The NEA exercise
Data processing Reconciliation
& consolidation
Analysis &
dissemination
Framework
National
report/brief
Reporting data
internationally
(UIS/UOE)
Mapping of
financial
flows
Classification

9. Without an NEA, expenditure on education is often
vastly underestimated: Education expenditure as %
GDP before and After NEA
3.8%
4.4%
6.0%
2.1%
9.3%
7.3%
7.9%
6.3%
0%
1%
2%
3%
4%
5%
6%
7%
8%
9%
10%
Nepal (2015) Côte d'Ivoire (2014) Viet Nam (2013) Uganda (2014)
After NEA
Before NEA

10. Key methodological outputs of the UNESCO
GPE-funded NEA project
International guidelines on NEA:
• Framework and classification
• Complete NEA databases on expenditure for each country for several years
• Consolidation and estimations methods
• Organisation and institutionalisation
• Methodological guide on to estimate household expenditure on education
from Household Surveys

11. Follow up on the NEA project results
• Follow up with the 8 participating countries to support
them sustaining and institutionalizing the accomplished
work
• Dissemination of the NEA methodology through regional
workshops (Asia and Africa)
• Building methodological links between NEA and other
surveys/studies (BOOST, CSR, PER, UIS questionnaire
on expenditure) using templates