Public Expenditures on Secondary Education and School Enrollment Rates: A Panel Pooled Group Mean Approach

The educational system in some less developed and developing countries, including Iran, are expensive, inefficient, and weak, which in turn weakens the accomplishment of their educational system. In this view, this study was conducted with the aim of investigating the relationship between the costs of secondary education and school attendance in the provinces of Iran for the period 2006-2019. Long-term estimations using the panel pooled group mean test (Panel PMG) show that public expenditure on secondary education, household income, urbanization, public expenditure on health, and student-teacher ratio are statistically significant in explaining changes in school attendance. The coefficient of the main variable of the research, i.e. public education expenses, has a positive, significant, and trivial sign, which will reduce the quality of educational services provided in schools and, as a result, decrease the educational results. This result is not unexpected in Iran; because it is expected that more and higher public resources are needed to improve education measures. In general, the results showed that the state of the Ministry of Education's share of the government's general budget and GDP is not satisfactory, and with this state, it will not be possible to achieve educational justice. In order to fill the gap in providing quality education in Iran, there is a need for extensive interventions. Targeting secondary education by allocating more education budgets is important if the country is to expand access to secondary education, reduce dropouts and grade repetition, and increase enrollment rates. In addition, school officials must develop financial and administrative skills so that they receive, distribute, and use funds in more optimal ways.