©Commonwealth of Australia 1998
ISBN 0 642 23779 4
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This report is funded under the Evaluation and Investigations Programme of the Department of Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs.
The views expressed in this report do not necessarily reflect the views of the Department of Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs.
Executive Summary
This report is the result of a study of educational expenditure and participation in 11 Asian economies, commissioned by the Department of Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs (DEETYA) late in 1997. The Asian economies selected by the Department for consideration were China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam.
The report reviews:
There are considerable deficiencies in the data available which means that the information presented and the findings of the report must be considered as tentative. The report relies mainly on UNESCO data. Despite UNESCO’s collection of data to a common framework, its capacity to ensure compliance to its standards appears to be limited. The report also draws on other international sources and reports from individual economies. There is a danger in using data from diverse sources that we will be comparing data collected with differences in scope. Drawing on a range of sources though has provided some tentative impression of aspects of the education systems not covered by UNESCO and also highlights the large differences sometimes occurring among the various data compilations.
Comparisons across the economies are also affected by the great differences in population and population growth rates, income and income growth. The selected economies include small population high-income economies like Hong Kong, Singapore and Australia and one large population high-income country, Japan. China has a huge population and a very low average income per head. Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines have, by comparison with Australia, large populations and low-incomes. Educational and other needs vary among the economies and the capacity to meet them is inverse to the need.
Educational participation and, to some extent, expenditure as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) are related to the level of income per head. Malaysia, Taiwan and Australia appear to make the largest commitment of public expenditure. Australia has high rates of educational participation and high ratios of staff to students in these comparisons.
Hong Kong and perhaps Singapore have lower public expenditures than other high-income economies. This may be accounted for by the relatively low ratios of staff to students in those economies’ schools and by their somewhat lower levels of tertiary participation compared with the other high-income economies.
Data on private outlays are sparse. In particular, South Korea and Japan, which have much of their higher education in the private sector, have relatively large private expenditures on education. The economies in this study vary considerably in the extent of the private provision of education, the degree of government subsidy of private education and the charging of fees in public education. Better data are needed on all of these factors if more precise comparisons are to be undertaken.
The lower the economy’s income per head the lower its educational participation tends to be in upper secondary education and in tertiary education. There are exceptions. The Philippines, for example, has a much higher level of participation than might be expected. It appears to achieve this by very low rates of staff per student and by a large private sector.
The report analyses the distribution of students in tertiary education by level and by field of study. However, the insights gained with the available data are limited.
Indeed the data compiled on educational participation and expenditures in this report did not give a good indication of the strategies adopted in the Asian economies or the effectiveness of those strategies. The identification of effective strategies requires a detailed analysis of the interrelationships among the data tabulated in this report and an analysis of each economy’s economic development and educational provision. Such a study was not possible in the time available for this project. In order to extend our commentary beyond the limited insights available from the data we have reported, we have drawn on the findings of other studies which have reviewed the educational strategies of high performing Asian economies. The main issues identified for educational strategies include:
The early successful Asian economies placed considerable emphasis on universal primary education. If there is a message for today it is to ensure that the whole workforce is provided with an education sufficient to enter and learn in the workplace.
Economies differ in the extent to which they provide specialist vocational education at senior secondary level. The evidence is not favourable to specialist vocational schooling except where there are strong links with employers and subsequent successful placement of the graduates in employment. The evidence for the need to expand particular fields of study at tertiary (e.g. engineering) is not obvious from the UNESCO data or from the detailed studies we have reviewed. Economies’ needs for engineers may well differ substantially according to the current pattern and pace of economic development.
The high-income Asian economies tended to pay relatively high average teacher salaries in the early years of their fast development and still do in recent years. They appeared to put more emphasis in the early years on paying teachers well, with their student teacher ratios tending to fall only as they approached high-income status.
Some of the high-income Asian economies, with the notable exception of Singapore in the 1980s, relied on private finance for a substantial part of their upper secondary and tertiary education. The ability to increase levels of funding for education may be related to obtaining private finance of various forms. Mechanisms to ensure quality and efficiency may involve increased private provision and market forces but the evidence reviewed is not conclusive. Governments in all economies remain the major source of educational funds and improved government administration is an important part of educational strategies.
A number of tentative generalisations have been drawn about the strategies of the—until recently—high performing Asian economies. Given the great variation in participation and expenditures among even the high-income economies, it is clear that more than one strategy is compatible with economic development. Strategies have to be developed appropriate to the particular economic and social needs of each economy.
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