Spending on education declines sharply in Greece during debt crisis: study

ATHENS, March 20 (Xinhua) -- The economic recession in Greece in recent years has led to major spending cuts on education both from the state and from individuals, indicated a new study on Wednesday.

Entitled "education in Greece: Crisis and evolution of public and private spending" the study made by Foundation for Economic and Industrial Research (IOBE), an Athens based private, non-profit, public-benefit research organization, covers the period 2000-2016.

According to the study, following a major increase recorded between 2001-2009, in the period 2010-2016 the government cut its spending by 22.7 percent for secondary education and 14.1 percent for higher education, compared to 2.4 percent for primary education, local SKAI TV reported.

The study of IOBE also found that the impact of the crisis on private spending on education was proportionally greater than the public one, as it fell from 3.3 billion euros (3.76 billion U.S. dollars) in 2009 to 2.1 billion euros (2.39 billion U.S. dollars) in 2016.

In comparison with the other countries of the EU, Greece spends less money on primary education, with 1.4 percent of GDP against 1.5 percent of the EU average, and on secondary, with 1.3 percent against 1.9 percent.

The situation gets better in higher education, as Greece's spending of 0.8 percent is slightly above the EU average of 0.7 percent. (1 Euro =1.14 U.S. dollars)