PUBLIC SPENDING ON EDUCATION, GOVERNANCE AND EDUCATIONAL OUTCOMES IN THE MENA COUNTRIES

This paper takes advantage of the educational development index to measure the influence of governance on the relationship between public spending in education and the educational outcomes particularly in the MENA countries for the period 2000-2010. This region continues to allocate a huge amount of resources to education but at the same time the quality of their institutions is low. The results prove that public spending on education and good governance affect positively the educational outcomes but being in the MENA region has a negative effect. This finding can be explained by the weak governance in these countries. In fact, more public funds on education associated with low governance cannot enhance educational outcomes. This result is confirmed for countries with low governance and for countries that despite the positive change of governance they still with low level.