Educational Finance in Western Europe: Some Experiences from a Tangled Web

Abstract

Education is one of the most important services provided by public gov- ernments in almost every country worldwide. However, the most important cross-country observations about education – like the PISA report by the OECD or the TIMSS by the IEA – focus only on international benchmarks to compare the knowledge capacity of pupils. This paper provides a general overview of the different forms how education expenditures are financed in ten European coun- tries. We observe the educational system in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom and point out the similarities and national distinctions.