Better financing: stronger outcomes. A public sector expenditure review for the education sector in Poland

This report analyzes the public expenditures of the education sector in Poland, with special interest in uncovering trends overtime, establishing international comparisons to benchmark Poland's fiscal efforts in education, and linking those expenditures to the outcomes of the education system. The report then presents a set of concrete policy options to improve the effectiveness and the efficiency of the education expenditures in Poland. The report highlights areas where improvement in the quality of expenditures can be achieved. For example, while Poland's student population in primary and secondary education continues to fall, the number of teachers has not followed the same trend as the demographic shift in the student population. There are inflexibilities in the management and deployment of teachers that have made this adjustment difficult. Incentives for local governments, which manage basic education, to quickly adjust the teaching force to demographic changes by consolidating schools and classrooms would liberate significant resources to increase the availability of financial resources to be used in non-recurrent, quality-enhancing investments in the education sector. Some specific budget management suggestions as well as the need for developing indicative standards for service delivery as a tool to determine the overall cost for delivering the educational service, are presented among the policy options that this paper outlines.