Chile Forum

Well, the budget is being put together.

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-0 ... tests.html

5.5% increase over last year, and Chile still has a surplus.

How many countries are doing that these days?

The kids also get the largest boost in history for public education of 7.2% over last year, with a 4 billion scholarship fund. I still think it is way too light considering how behind Chilean education is to developed countries, but still a serious start.

Total budget: $60 billion US

I don't know. Public education in the US is pretty bad. I don't know how Chile ranks up, but Mexico's public education k-12 system is close to par with US. Of course, everything in the Americas is light years behind what some european counrties are doing. But the system up here is basically untouched from pre-WWI days.

What % of GDP is spent on education?

mje173 wrote: What % of GDP is spent on education?

Percentage of GDP spent is a poor indicator. See what Germany and Japan and South Korea get for their "percentage of GDP" and then compare the same percentages to the uncivilised nations, to see the need to come up with a more meaningful set of predictors.

In Chile's case the percentage numbers can be particularly misleading since part of that gross (but quoted) percentage is spent by government, and part of it is spent by the private sector, and the relative percentages of such divisions differ from country to country. So citing a gross "percentage of GDP" is almost meaningless as a reliable indicator.

Let's consider a better one: student discipline as a predictor. Japan would get an "A" and Chile would get an "F." You can throw pearls at pigs all day and all you get will be stink.

Correct. Education spending does not correlate well with good educational outcomes. Many times politicians and consumers of education throw money at a problem that has more to do with productivity/efficiency than with lack of resources. A central part of solving a problem is determining where the problem is in the first place.