Romania is among the last five countries in the European Union based on the budget allocated to education. The public expenses allotted to education valued only 4.1 percent of the country's GDP, only higher than Greece, Slovakia and Bulgaria, according to data from Eurostat, the European Statistics Office.

The EU average is of 5.34 percent of GDP spent on education, and Romania is still below that, despite having increased the ratio in the last couple of years.

The highest spending on education was recorded in Denmark – 7.8 percent of the GDP, Cyprus – 7.2 percent, and Sweden, 6.67 percent.

In 2011, EU-27 total general government expenditure amounted to 49.1 percent of GDP. Based on the latest available expenditure data by economic function for 2011, 5.3 percent of GDP was devoted to expenditure on education. Of this, the highest shares were dedicated to ‘secondary education’ at 2.0 percent of GDP and ‘pre-primary and primary education’ at 1.7 percent of GDP, according to the Eurostat report.

Spending on research and development education is low across the board, and down to zero for Romania, as well as for many other EU countries. The highest ratio of spending on R&D education was recorded in the Czech Republic, 0.27 percent.

In Romania's case, the biggest percentage – 1.58 percent, goes to secondary education, and 1.31 on pre-primary and primary education. Only 0.02 percent goes to Post-secondary non-tertiary education, while 0.87 percent goes to tertiary education - this includes universities as well as institutions that teach specific disciplines of higher learning.

As a ratio to GDP, government expenditure on education followed a declining trend from 2002 until 2007 and then increased sharply from 2008 to 2009, mainly due to decreases in GDP at current prices, according to Eurostat. The full report is here.

editor@romania-insider.com