Characteristics Of Public Education Financing SystemA fundamental goal of the State is the educational development of all persons in its work area. The State is responsible for providing an efficient system of high quality public educational institutions and services. In fact, there are government rules in certain countries, which make it mandatory for public schools to provide free education through the secondary level. All in all, financing the system of public education is State’s primary responsibility. In the case of private schooling, schools operate independently of the state as they are not governed by the rules. As a result, they make profit by charging hefty tuition fees from students. Contrary to this, the funding for public schools is provided by tax revenues. This enables them to keep the tuition fees affordable so that even individuals, who do not attend school (or whose dependents do not attend school), help to ensure that society is educated. In a society, where poverty rules, authorities are often lenient on compulsory school attendance because the children there are valuable laborers. The major chunk of public education financing system comes from the central budget. Apart from this, contributions from the revenues of school maintainers, tuition fees paid by students and additional revenues of the schools add to the finance pool. State provides two types of support for the financing system of public education: per student capita grant and earmarked subsidies. Per student capita grant is automatically received by local governments, but they have to apply individually to avail earmarked subsidies. Per student capita grant is generally calculated according to the number of students and type of tasks undertaken. Also, the local governments are free to spend the per student capita grant as per their discretion. It is not necessary that financing from central budget will be in proportion to expenditure by educational institution. In such cases, local governments may utilize additional resources to finance public education. In general, expenditure on public education by local government exceeds the educational subsidies received from central budget. The extent of the expenses of the educational institutions is fixed by the local governments in their annual budgets. The annual budget takes into account the school revenues and the amount of contribution allocated to school by them. To maintain the principle of sectoral neutrality, the per student capita grant given to school maintainers (other than local governments or the state) may not be less than the amount provided to the local governments. |