Inclusion and education

COUNTRIES ARE RE-EXAMINING 
THEIR MECHANISMS FOR FINANCING 
INCLUSIVE EDUCATION
Achieving equity and inclusion requires adequate funds 
reaching schools and students according to need. 
Countries pursue policies of varying form and intensity to 
mitigate the education impact of vulnerabilities such as 
poverty, ethnicity, disability and remoteness. In general, 
three funding levers are important in analysing financing 
for equity and inclusion in education.
First, governments pursue an overall policy of financing 
local authorities or schools. Such policies range from 
those aimed at ensuring that every authority or school 
receives the same level of resources per student (equality) 
to those meant to take into account characteristics of 
areas, schools or their student populations (equity). 
Policies may vary by type of school or by type of financial, 
human resource or material input, with approaches for 
distribution of maintenance grants, for instance, differing 
from those for teacher appointments or equipment 
purchases. More rarely, allocation may be determined 
by outcomes or another performance element. General 
policies focusing on equality may be complemented by 
specific programmes compensating for disadvantage.
Second, education financing policies and programmes 
may target students and their families rather than 
authorities and schools. Such financing may be in the 
form of cash (e.g. scholarships), exemptions from fees or 
in-kind support (e.g. school meals).
Third, social protection programmes targeting students 
and families may affect equity and inclusion in education. 
Examples include conditional cash transfers or child 
grants with an education component that aim to address 
poverty. Targeting mechanisms tend to be well articulated 
and regularly evaluated.
For each funding lever, the key aspects to consider when 
examining the potential impact on equity are whether 
specific policies or programmes exist to reallocate 
resources to disadvantaged areas or populations (and, if 
so, using what targeting criteria); the absolute volume or 
relative depth of spending (e.g. average transfer size); and 
coverage in terms of percentage of schools, students or 
families reached.
How funds are transferred to schools, and how schools 
can use them, affects equity and inclusion
Governments tend to fund schools in proportion to 
the number of students. The general allocation is often 
complemented by criteria that assign different weights 
at the central or regional level before transferring funds 
to schools. The criteria typically cover diverse learning 
support needs, diverse languages and cultures, and diverse 
locations in remote rural or mountainous areas. Equity 
is not synonymous with equality. Unequal treatment of 
people with diverse backgrounds may be needed, providing 
differential funding for different student groups depending 
on their needs and the needs of the schools that ensure 
they are effectively supported.
Poland’s government uses a formula based on the
actual 
number of students, adapted by a system of weights 
reflecting conditions in a given school or area (e.g. rural 
areas, small towns, small schools); the variety and 
specificity of school tasks (e.g. special and integrated 
education, vocational education for particular economic 
sectors, sport schools, education for national and ethnic 
minorities, art education); and the variety and specificity 
of out-of-school tasks (e.g. boarding facilities, special 
nursery schools).
How central, regional and local authorities are involved in 
budget design and allocation before funds reach schools 
is important in understanding their potential effect on 
redistribution. Moreover, equity and inclusion can be 
affected not only by the level, criteria and mechanisms of 
allocation but also by the degree of autonomy granted 
to local governments and schools in allocating the funds 
according to learners’ needs.
In Turkey, the Ministry of National Education sets the 
budget and allocates it directly to schools on the basis 
of student numbers and the previous year’s expenditure. 
School administrations have limited authority in budget 
setting. Giving more power to school administrations 
for budget setting is a strategic objective to be 
achieved by 2023.
In theory, when local governments can make decisions on 
the basis of information from school support services or 
advisory centres, and schools have some leeway in their 
spending decisions, budgets tend to be more effective and 
efficient in achieving the objectives of inclusive education 
Achieving equity and inclusion requires adequate funds reaching schools 
and students according to need
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GLOBAL EDUCATION MONITORING REPORT 2021

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(Meijer and Watkins, 2019; European Agency, 2016a, 2016b). 
In Lithuania, information shared between levels improves 
budget preparation to fit schools’ needs. At the beginning 
of the school year, each school informs its funder 
(municipality or other) about the number of learners with 
recognized special education needs. The funder informs 
the Centre of Information Technologies in Education, 
under the Ministry of Education, Science and Sport, 
which is responsible for compiling a learner database. 
The rules specify that allocations for students with 
special education needs should be double the basic per 
student allocation and those for ethnic minority students 
5% higher. Funding for non-teaching staff, operational 
resources and capital assets remains within municipal 
education budgets
.
In Bulgaria, state and municipal kindergartens and schools 
receive state budget funds to cover basic and additional 
staff remuneration for working with children and students 
from vulnerable groups, as well as other out-of-work pay 
and benefits. In 2015, Estonia’s Ministry of Education 
and Research adopted a new concept of early childhood 
education and care that gives local governments more 
flexibility in organizing provision, based on the needs of 
children and families. In Slovakia, there is a high degree of 
school financial autonomy to make spending decisions 
that promote school improvement.
In practice, devolution of responsibility to a broad range 
of actors can also lead to ineffective or inequitable use 
of resources, especially when capacity for developing 
effective funding plans is insufficient at the local or 
school level. These concerns may be amplified by weak 
articulation between decision-making levels and limited 
collaboration among the actors involved. Excessively 
complex governance arrangements can lead to inefficient 
school funding structures (OECD, 2017). Bosnia and 
Herzegovina consists of three units: the Federation 
of Bosnia and Herzegovina (consisting of 10 cantons), 
Republika Srpska and Brčko district. Each of these 
12 administrative units has its own education ministry, 
legislation and budget. In this case, decentralization does 
not guarantee equity. Mechanisms of financial assistance 
for children from disadvantaged groups differ, in some 
cases even within municipalities. For instance, learners 
with special needs are entitled to transport to school 
and financial assistance in some parts of the country but 
not in others.
By contrast, Slovenia is characterized by a centralized 
decision-making process in terms of education 
governance but grants some autonomy to schools. The 
financing system is prescribed in detail at the national 
level. Mechanisms for monitoring spending have to 
meet criteria and standards issued by the Ministry of 
Education, Science and Sport. Funding allocations to 
support inclusion of learners from vulnerable groups are 
set by national laws and regulations, but school councils 
have autonomy to decide the annual work plan, while 
taking national regulations into account.
An alternative approach is to use the budget strategically 
to provide incentives for schools to achieve specific 
outcomes. Conditional grants may stimulate schools 
to shift towards long-term inclusive education policy 
objectives, but such experimental approaches inevitably 
remain small in scale. In 2017, the Ministry of Education 
in Azerbaijan introduced a programme providing small 
competitive grants to applicants with a record of 
improving school environments, student achievement 
and teaching and learning practices. The grants aim to 
identify, document and share good practices and provide 
support to take them to scale, working in partnership 
with communities. The target beneficiaries are schools or 
teachers working with communities or groups of schools. 
Priorities include raising public awareness of inclusive 
education, improving social pedagogy and psychological 
counselling, and supporting positive school environments. 
In three years, 25 projects have been awarded a total of 
almost US$75,000.
The World Bank-funded 2015–22 Romanian Secondary 
Education project, which supports efforts to identify 
and monitor out-of-school children, provides grants to 
disadvantaged upper secondary schools to reduce early 
school leaving rates and improve school performance. 
Depending on the number of students enrolled and 
results obtained on the baccalaureate examination, the 
grant value ranges between EUR 70,000 and
EUR 152,500. The project encourages interventions in 
Roma communities, learner-centred activities, mentoring 
and counselling, and extracurricular activities.
Any model of decentralization needs to be relevant to 
national context, as ‘even the best policies travel badly’ 
(Harris, 2012, p. 395). Instead of attempts to replicate 
policy from other countries, international experience 
should serve to ‘enrich policy analysis, not to short-cut 
it’ (Raffe, 2011, p. 3). Ideally, decentralization of education 
decision making should be part of broader public sector 
reforms, whereas enhanced school autonomy might be 
prompted by more education-specific concerns about 
school management and performance (OECD, 2013).
Devolution of responsibility to a broad 
range of actors can also lead to ineffective 
or inequitable use of resources
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C E N T R A L A N D E A S T E R N E U R O P E , C A U C A S U S A N D C E N T R A L A S I A

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In the case of financing disability-inclusive education, a 
challenge for policymakers is that spending throughout the 
education system, which can help mainstream students 
from disadvantaged groups, may fail learners with 
disabilities, as fulfilling their needs for support is costlier. 
Funding for special and integrated education is linked to a 
formal assessment involving external experts, requiring a 
diagnosis that could lead to strategic behaviour by parents, 
teachers or other actors. Such strategic behaviour may 
result in less inclusion, more labelling and rising costs for 
the education system in general (European Agency, 2016a).
The 2012 education law of the Russian Federation supports 
inclusion of all students. In practice, however, mainstream 
and special schools continue to operate in parallel, since 
mainstream schools that are willing to enrol students with 
special education needs do not receive additional funding.
Countries may use resource-based models in which fund 
allocation is based on use of support services. These 
systems eliminate the dependency of funding on learners’ 
official diagnosis and the consequent social labelling. 
They finance resources used by schools to educate 
students regardless of what their specific needs are. In the 
Czech Republic, the use of a per capita amount per pupil 
was replaced in January 2020 by a per capita amount 
per pedagogical worker/member of education staff. The 
new system aims to guarantee financing of the number 
of hours taught. When allocating resources, it takes into 
account the size and structure of study fields in schools 
and regions, the financial cost of support measures and the 
salary levels of teachers in individual schools.
Direct funding to disadvantaged students and their 
families can support equity and inclusion
Funding can be directed preferentially not just to 
disadvantaged schools but also to disadvantaged learners 
and their families. Such supplementary funding to 
students may take different forms, such as scholarships or 
allocations in kind. These funding modalities aim to cover 
costs that could represent entry barriers to disadvantaged 
students, such as school fees and the price of transport, 
textbooks and meals. For instance, seven education 
systems in the region target scholarships to Roma 
students (
Figure 4.2
).
In North Macedonia, the Ministry of Education and 
Science project Regular Class Attendance: Action for 
Inclusion of Roma in Primary Education is funded by 
the EU and implemented by three NGOs: Open Society 
Spending throughout the education system, which can help mainstream 
students from disadvantaged groups, may fail learners with disabilities, as 
fulfilling their needs for support is costlier