Improving Education Finance Equity in Belize through Formula Funding
Date
2021-07
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Abstract
Before the educational financial reform of 2010, the government gave schools block grants to private schools to cover 70 percent of teacher salaries and 100% of tuition fees, while paying 100% of all expenditures to public schools. This input-based funding resulted in gross inequities, where schools in more affluent areas captured a disproportionate share of public funds by employing more experienced and expensive teachers. Also, urban schools with more diverse curricula, and more teachers, captured more funding that public schools in poor areas with a basic curriculum and fewer teachers. In 2011 the government designed and implemented a funding formula based on enrolment, poverty, and the proportion of disadvantaged students in school, with the goal of improving financial equity. Under the formula, some schools that used to receive above average funding would get their budget reduced. These schools were designated as Above Average Funding Schools and their grant amount was left untouched. Schools that would receive more funding under the formula were labeled Below Average Funding Schools, and the gap between their past funding and the funding determined by the formula would be closed incrementally over a period of seven years.
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Keywords
education finance, Belize, formula funding