I feel like this needs to be normalized to education outcomes or some equivalency test. Like is there a country only using >3% of their GDP outperforming a country spending <6%? Like is Japan outperforming SA or Brazil on education outcomes / effectiveness?
It also matters how the money is being used. Some schools will be spending that on teachers and supplies, other will dump most of their budget into their sports programs and underfund everything else.
And GDP is a hard measurement to weigh against because it depends on how much income a country gets in the first place. Countries like China or Japan having a lower portion of GDP going to education is more likely just indicative of having a high GDP in general, where they may be spending more on their education than other countries, but at a smaller overall percentage.
Why not normalize currencies across the board to equivalent value in euro or dollars or similar, then measure total spending per capita?
True, and maybe more importantly GDP per Capita. These nations have drastically different populations as well.
