Assessment of the efficiency of public education expenditure on literacy rate in Nigeria

Abstract

Abstract. Bearing in mind the critical role of education in the development of human capital base of a nation, it is widely accepted that government has a major role to play in guaranteeing the provision of educational opportunities. Therefore, it is expected that adequate finance to the education sector would translate to improvement in educational outcome in the country. Motivated by this, the study reexamined the impact of government education expenditure on educational outcome in Nigeria from 1980 to 2018. The study adopted the Autoregressive Distributed lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach in estimating the relevant relationship while the ECM captured the speed of short run adjustment to long run equilibrium. The result of the study showed a positive, but insignificant relationship between public education expenditure and educational outcome in Nigeria. Arising from the findings, the study recommends for an adequate and prudent financing to the education sector necessary to guarantee enhanced literacy rate in Nigeria.Keywords. Government education expenditure, Educational outcome.JEL. H52.