The OECD has a detailed indicator system about education, among other things financing of education of the several the member states. There are two main types of them:

1. One type of them shows the nominal expenditures, mostly correlated to the number of students and/or the price-level of each countries (expressed in a real currency -- e.g.   Dollar – or in a fictive monetary unit).

If we analyse the date of the EU member state we can observe on the on hand the advantage of the high developed countries, and the other hand the disadvantage of the countries which have not too good economic indicators – e.g. the post socialistic states. It seems, the education of the last ones cannot reach the level of the other ones, because they have weaker economy and less economic power. (Except of if they can use their financial sources very effective.)

1. The other type of the indicators shows the relative expenditures of the education correlated to GDP or GNP. They indicate the importance of education in the countries, but we cannot decide what mean a high or low level of it: whether high/low level of the expenditure, or low/high level of GDP/GNP.  We hardly can interpret the measure of it, if the GDP/GNP fast changes e.g. during an economic crises.

If we compare e.g. the indicators of Germany and Hungary we can see that Germany expanded less (18.0%) to its education, than Hungary (19.5%) (2012; ISCED 1; expenditure to one pupil and GDP to one person). But the difference of the GDP of the two countries are very big, so we can suppose that Hungary hardly can improve its education compared to Germany.

After analysing the types of indicators, it seems necessary to use also a third type of indicators (or: a new variant of the first type of it), which a nominal value compared to the rate of wages of the different countries.  

Since the big part of expenditures in education are wages, it has a big importance, how the teachers are paid. And if a national labour market not internationalized (e.g in many countries in the EU), teachers’ salaries are measured to the domestic rate of wages. So if the teacher are paid well in this comparison, they can remain in the education, the education can select the best ones among them, and the governing of education can require higher standard in teaching.

Our analysis of expenditures used this new indicator tries to explain performances of some countries, which were not explained by the traditional financial indicators, but it was supposed it was caused also by level of expenditure.

Dexia: Sub-national governments in the European Union. Paris, Dexia Editionss.2008. Educational at a Glance. OECD. Volumes: 2007-2015 Eurostat database. Hanuschek, E.: The economics of schooling, In: Journal of Economic Literature, 1986/24.