The Government of Georgia will not spend 6% of GDP on education in 2022, - the IMF’s new report reads.
According to the document, former Prime Minister Mauka Bakhtadze’s strategy “National Idea of Education” provided spending of 6% of GDP on education.
Mamuka Bkhtadze presented his strategy in March 2019, which should be launched from 2022.
“The Government of Georgia is announcing the launch of the boldest and largest-scale idea: the national concept of education, within the scope of which the government will take an unprecedented commitment to annually spend 6% of our national wealth, which makes a quarter of the current budget of the country, on the full transformation of the Georgian education system into one of the most outstanding,” said Bakhtadze.
According to the IMF document, Georgia mainly considers raising the qualification of teachers and developing the vocational education system in education reform.
In 2021, the budget for the Ministry of Education is 1.8 billion GEL (of which 300 million is for culture and sports, which is already a separate agency). In total, this funding is up to 3.4% of Georgia's GDP, and 2.8% of GDP directly goes to the funding of education sector. In order to fulfill the parameter defined by the strategy "National Idea of Education", the budget of the Ministry of Education should be doubled in 2022 and become 3.49 billion GEL.
According to 2021 budget, funding for schools is 894 million GEL, 10.3 million GEL will be spent on the professional development of teachers, funding for higher education totals to 153 million GEL, of which 117 million are undergraduate and graduate funding grants. Science and research will be financed with 60.4 million GEL, while 60 million GEL will be spent on vocational education.
