This policy note is part of the World Bank's Programmatic Public Expenditure Review (PER) work program for FY2012-2014. The PER consists of a series of fiscal policy notes, which aim at providing the Government of Tajikistan with recommendations to strengthen budgetary processes and analysis. This policy note, the third in the series, examines public expenditures on education in Tajikistan, focusing on assessing efficiency and equity of general education spending. Section 2 reviews the characteristics of Tajikistan's educational system, including access and equity in enrollment and quality of education. Section 3 analyzes overall public spending on education and a breakdown by financing source, subsector, and expenditure category, as well as unit costs by level of education. Section 4 examines general education financing, which is the largest spending unit within the education sector, in more depth. Section 5 covers demographic trends and enrollment projections and their implications on education spending. Section 6 provides the main conclusions: 1) the level of public spending on education in Tajikistan is comparable to similarly developed countries
2) the pre-school enrollment rate is extremely low
3) while primary education is near universal with gender parity, early dropouts are a significant problem
4) available evidence suggests poor quality of early learning at pre-primary and primary levels
5) the current wage system does not provide strong incentives for highly qualified new and experienced teachers
6) per capita financing of general education has resulted in many positive outcomes overall, but implementation varies by district
7) unit costs for new construction of school infrastructure vary considerably
8) high unit costs of pre-school, vocational, and tertiary education suggest significant inefficiencies within these sub-sectors
and 9) demographic developments put an upward pressure on educational spending, particularly for increasing general secondary education spending. Methods to increase the fiscal space for education are discussed.