Secondary education

The main focus of this report is on education expenditure and participation. The indicator most frequently referred to in public debates on expenditure is the percentage of GDP per country on education. A serious problem with this indicator is that it is affected by enrolment rates and the size of the youth population. A more sophisticated indicator is the cost per student. To be valid this indicator requires not only an accurate assessment of educational expenditure but also of the numbers of students participating. The next section focuses on specific problems with regard to data collection on costs in secondary education, especially from a Dutch perspective. The section deals with possible explanations that may be derived from available international (OECD) statistics to explain the relatively low expenditure on education in the Netherlands. The third section is on participation