The COVID-19 pandemic exposed a fundamental weakness in many education systems: when shocks occur, the learners already facing the greatest barriers to education are often the hardest hit. As countries confront a new period of financial pressure, marked by rising debt burdens, competing demands on public expenditure and – for the poorest ones – declining aid, that lesson remains highly relevant. Education systems must have established, proven routes for directing resources towards those with the greatest need so that periods of crisis do not automatically becoming periods of widening inequality. 

What does resilience mean for education? 

Resilience is the buzzword of the moment and a central theme of the Transforming Education Summit +4 Stocktake taking place this week in Paris. In education, resilience has been defined is the capacity of systems to thrive (e.g. maintain progress in access, participation and learning), while adapting to financial, political and environmental challenges, which we will be exploring in the 2028/9 GEM Report.  

Financial resilience has a place within this discussion. For example, while the GEM Report projected last year that aid to education would fall by 25% between 2023 and 2027, our new policy paper out later this week suggests the reduction is likely to be even greater.  

Protecting the progress countries are making towards their national SDG 4 benchmarks will require education systems that can absorb current and future financial shocks without widening existing inequalities. 

We should not forget the lessons learnt from the COVID-19 pandemic about how closely resilience and equity are connected. As documented in the 2020 GEM Report, this global shock widened educational inequalities in many countries as school closures exposed large gaps in a resources and access to basic services.  

Education systems that systematically direct resources towards disadvantaged learners, schools and communities are better positioned to preserve access and learning for these vulnerable groups during periods of financial constraint and uncertainty. 

How can countries design robust, equitable finance mechanisms to absorb shocks?  

The 2026 GEM Report made the point that progress is not possible if it is not equitable. By mapping every single country’s finance mechanisms on the PEER website, the report found that governments have been increasingly using targeted financing mechanisms in the past 25 years to redistribute resources. These include transfers to disadvantaged regions, grants to schools serving vulnerable communities, scholarships and stipends for learners, and school feeding programmes. But the extent and effectiveness of these approaches vary considerably. This is where work on resilience needs to improve. 

Designing equitable financing policies can be hard. One model in one country may easily not work in another. The weighting you give when distributing funds to students or schools, the administrative set up you have, the combinations of different mechanisms you use, and so on, need to be designed to meet countries’ specific needs. Because effects are not immediate or direct, being sure that your design has achieved what you want it to do may not always be so obvious.  

Given the importance of this issue, the GEM Report collected information on five key mechanisms in all countries, which feature in its PEER website, and developed a new index of equity-oriented financing. The index examines not just whether funding is redistributed, but also its coverage and volume in order to assess the extent to which education financing systems are designed to address disadvantage. The index showed that only 8% of countries have advanced financing systems that combine multiple redistributive mechanisms at scale. Around one fifth remain at an early stage, with limited or no use of equity-oriented approaches.  

A few key findings emerge from the analysis, which should be feeding into any debate about resilience, ensuring that shocks do not further widen education inequalities.  

1. At the regional level, more than half of countries channel education funding through subnational governments, for instance, which is a solid way of evening up opportunities. Yet fewer than half use explicit equity criteria such as poverty levels, remoteness or fiscal capacity when allocating resources. 

1. At the school level, meanwhile, three quarters of countries provide additional support to disadvantaged schools. However, in many countries these transfers represent less than 0.5% of total education expenditure. 

1. At the household level, direct financial support to students and households may be widespread, but coverage remains substantially lower in low-income countries than in high-income countries. 

Countries with stronger results tend to combine multiple financing instruments. Funding formulas support disadvantaged regions, additional resources reach vulnerable schools, and financial assistance helps learners and households overcome barriers to participation. Coherence across these different mechanisms increases the likelihood that resources reach those who need them most. 

A new Equitable Financing in Education working group to support peer learning 

To support countries as they seek to design systems that work, the GEM Report has established an Equitable Financing in Education (working group, co-chaired by Brazil and Italy. This group forms a global community of practice, aimed at moving forward the agenda on equity in education through financing post 2030. With the first of its sessions being held today, it will promote knowledge sharing among senior country officials, initially from 12 countries from 6 SDG regions. It will also develop knowledge products distilling collective experiences to document good practices and transferable lessons.  

Financing for resilience 

With the financial outlook for education deteriorating, protecting budgets and international support will remain critical. Yet our strong belief is that choices made about how resources are allocated may prove just as important as the total resources available. 

Countries that direct funding towards disadvantaged learners, schools and regions are more likely to sustain participation and learning during periods of disruption. As for those that do not, they risk seeing existing inequalities deepen when shocks occur. 

As the education community looks beyond the TES+4 Stocktake, resilience should be understood not only as the capacity to absorb shocks, but as the capacity to protect those most vulnerable to them. Building more equitable financing systems is a practical strategy for safeguarding progress towards SDG 4 in an increasingly uncertain world.