At the Rimini 2025 Meeting of Communion and Liberation, the Minister of Education and Merit Giuseppe Valditara in one of his intervention said that in Italy “state funding is absolutely not inferior to that of many other European countries, I think that in relation to GDP is even higher than Germany. It is the private funding that is dramatically lower ». In fact, according to the latest official data issued by Eurostat and also reported by Istat, at 2023 (latest data available) Italy is among the EU countries that invests less in the education sector, with a public expenditure equal to 3.9% of GDP (gross domestic product), in the face of an EU average of 4.7%. Germany, cited by Valditara, in 2023 destined 4.7% of GDP to education. This is not an isolated fact: according to Istat data, Italian investments for the world of school, university and research have decreased in recent years, without ever reaching 4.5% of Italian GDP since 2000. Investments in Italy are however higher than the European average as regards primary school.
Public spending intended for education in 2023
As anticipated, the latest available data issued by the Eurostat (and also reported within the Istat report We Italy 2025) concern the year 2023, when the expenditure intended by the Italian state for education reached 3.9% of our gross domestic product (GDP), compared to an EU average which instead reached 4.7%. To be clear, it means a total of about 82.9 billion euros, compared to an Italian GDP 2023 equal to 2,128 billion euros. This positions us at the end of the ranking of the European Union countries for investments dedicated to education: behind us, on the list of 27 EU countries, only Romania (3.3%) and Ireland (2.8%).
In Italy, therefore, public investments intended in 2023 to education were not higher than those of Germany, which instead spent 4.5% of its GDP for the world of school, university and research. At the height of the ranking there are countries such as Sweden (7.2%of GDP), Belgium (6.3%), Estonia (6.3%) and Finland (6.1%).
The trend of public spending for education since 2000
To be considered, however, there is also the trend of public spending for education over the past 23 years. Starting from 2000, in fact, the Italian investments against this sector have been quite fluctuating, with a constant decrease since 2010, with the exclusion of a peak recorded between 2018 and 2020.
As visible also from the graph, the situation does not change much if we consider the outputs intended for education compared to the total amount of public spending: in 2023, for example, investments for school, university and research were 6.5% of the total public spending, a value that in 2000 almost 9% of the state exits of the state reached the 2000s.
While considering the demographic decline, the expenditure per student in relation to the per capita GDP has also decreased, from 23% in 2000 to a value of less than 20% in 2023: this reduction, however, varies according to the level of education considered (primary, secondary school, university or preschool education).
Specifically, over the past 23 years the public spending intended for university education has gone from 20% to 15% of the per capita GDP: it should be emphasized, however, that this decline is not so much to be attributed to the reduction of public allocations for the university (which remained rather similar considering the inflation rate), but rather to the increase in the number of university students over the past 23 years.
As also reported in the graph above, in 2021 the Italian public investments for primary education have instead been among the highest if compared with those of the most economically advanced countries, with an expense per student equal to 25% of the per capita GDP.
On the contrary, as regards secondary and tertiary education (university), the Italian position is actually among the worst: to have an idea, in absolute terms in 2021 Italy spent about 7,200 euros for university student (or enrolled in other tertiary institutions), less than half compared to what was spent from Germany (16,300 euros), but also less than the expenditure of France (12,500 euros) and Spain (10,500 euros).
