Education

Budgets That Get
From Treasury to Textbook

Every African government spends more on education than on almost any other sector. Yet learning outcomes have stalled, and in many countries they have got worse. The problem is rarely the size of the education budget. It is how that budget is structured, spent and accounted for.

Across Sub-Saharan Africa, up to 80 percent of education spending goes to teacher salaries. That leaves very little for the textbooks, materials, maintenance, supervision and assessment that decide whether teaching turns into learning. On top of that, close to a third of education spending in developing countries is lost to inefficiency, leakage and poor targeting. Learning outcomes follow the discipline of spending far more closely than they follow the headline budget figure.

The Global Partnership for Education launched its 2030 strategy in Nairobi in January 2026, with a fully funded plan that could enrol 204 million more children, improve learning for 105 million, and lift 23 million out of poverty. None of it happens without country PFM systems that work. Education reform works when budgets are protected, payroll is clean, materials arrive on time, and schools have the authority and the accountability to make decisions that suit their pupils.

Where PFM Needs to Make a Difference

Priority areas where public financial management determines whether education spending actually translates into better learning. Scroll across to explore each.

Teacher Payroll and Workforce Management

  • Are teacher payrolls clean, free of ghost workers, duplicates and unauthorised additions, and subject to regular independent audit?
  • Are teachers paid in full and on time, every month, including in remote and rural deployments?
  • Are payments tied to verified deployment and presence, not just to the establishment list?
  • Are hardship allowances and incentive payments delivered reliably enough to support deployment in underserved areas?

Learning Materials Procurement

  • Are budgets for textbooks, learning materials and assessment tools protected from in-year cuts when fiscal pressures mount?
  • Are procurement systems competitive, transparent, and capable of delivering materials before the school year begins?
  • Is there a verifiable chain of custody from central procurement to the classroom, and are stock levels tracked at school level?
  • Are arrangements in place to fund timely replenishment of consumables, not only one-off start-of-cycle purchases?

Infrastructure: Build and Maintain

  • Are recurrent maintenance budgets protected, or do schools deteriorate between successive build cycles because maintenance is the first line cut?
  • Is public investment management for new school construction subject to strong appraisal, procurement and oversight?
  • Are budgets for basic infrastructure (water, sanitation, electricity, connectivity) credible and executed in full?
  • Are climate-resilient design standards funded through actual construction budgets, not left as unfunded mandates?

Equity Across Regions and Income Groups

  • Do per-pupil allocations narrow the gap between richer and poorer regions, or do they reinforce existing inequalities?
  • Are formula-based grants used to channel resources to the schools and districts that need them most?
  • Is there public, school-level reporting of allocations and execution, enabling communities to hold the system accountable?
  • Are budgets for inclusive education (girls, children with disabilities, refugees, the very poorest) protected and tracked separately?

School-Level Financial Authority

  • Do head teachers and school management committees have the authority to manage discretionary budgets in response to school-level needs?
  • Are school grant disbursements predictable in timing and amount, or do delays cripple operational planning?
  • Are accountability tools (school accounts, expenditure tracking, social audit) embedded in the system rather than bolted on?
  • Do oversight mechanisms protect frontline managers from politically driven over-spending pressure?

Examinations, Assessment and Data Systems

  • Are national learning assessments funded as a permanent line item, or are they dependent on donor cycles?
  • Are EMIS (Education Management Information Systems) financed end-to-end across collection, validation and reporting, and used in budget decisions?
  • Do data systems support payment formulas, deployment decisions and equity adjustments at the right level of granularity?

Skills, TVET and Tertiary Financing

  • Are TVET and skills budgets aligned with labour-market signals, or do they fund obsolete programmes by inertia?
  • Are there transparent, performance-linked financing mechanisms for tertiary institutions?
  • Is there a credible mechanism to co-finance skills programmes with the private sector and capture employer demand?
  • Are scholarships and student-support budgets executed in full and reaching the intended beneficiaries?

A Three-Layered Support Model from PFPR

Immediate

Technical Assistance for Education Financing

PFPR teams take established diagnostic tools, including FinEd and PEFA, and apply them to the most pressing PFM questions in each country's education system. The starting point is a baseline across payroll integrity, materials procurement, infrastructure maintenance and school-level financial authority.

It works with ministries of finance and education together to design reform actions that government owns and drives, and it stays through implementation rather than handing over a report and moving on.

Structural

Building African Capacity for Education PFM

Through the Africa School of Governance, PFPR develops curriculum modules on education financing. They cover payroll integrity, materials procurement, school-grant systems and the use of EMIS data in budget decisions.

The aim is a group of African practitioners who understand both how education systems actually work and the PFM that decides whether budgets reach the classroom. They are the core of PFPR's in-country support, working alongside government teams.

Collaboration and Convening

Connecting the Education Financing Ecosystem

Education financing is shaped by a broad set of partners: the Global Partnership for Education, UNESCO, UNICEF, the World Bank, regional development banks, philanthropies and bilateral donors. Under that weight the system can fragment.

PFPR brings these actors around one practical question: how education money is budgeted, spent and tracked. In each country it gets finance, education and oversight institutions working to a shared reform agenda. Across countries it connects reformers facing similar payroll, procurement and equity problems.

PFPR — Public Finance for Prosperity & Resilience
Founding Partners

An African Initiative,
Backed by African Institutions

Vanguard Economics created and launched PFPR in 2024–2025, and delivers it in partnership with the Africa School of Governance. The two provide the institutional base for PFPR's first phase.