Equity is at the heart of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4, which aims to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all. Equity is also the foundation of the Incheon Declaration, formed during the 2015 World Education Forum, which calls inclusion and equity “the cornerstone of a transformative education agenda”. As SDG4 requires that no education target should be considered met unless met by all, education systems must confront, head-on, the needs of the most disadvantaged as they progress towards 2030.

While there is a growing understanding of the critical importance of equity in education, there is a need for clarity of definitions, consistency in data collection and measurement, and a more deliberate approach to building evidence on what works in improving education outcomes for the most disadvantaged children and youth. The Education Equity Research Initiative seeks to address this growing need through four interrelated research workstreams: 1) Measurement and Metrics, 2) Learning and Retention, 3) Conflict and Fragility, and 4) Finance and Resource Allocation. Through these workstreams, the Initiative aims to create a collaborative space for researchers and education practitioners to review existing evidence, identify and address gaps in data, and work across programs and contexts to gather lessons learned about effective policy and practice in education, with the ultimate goal of moving the field towards greater equity. 

This literature review falls under the Initiative’s Finance and Resource Allocation workstream, which aims to address the institutional drivers of inequality in education by examining spending and resource distribution in education at the sectoral and sub-sectoral levels. The review examines the literature around education finance in an attempt to describe the current state of play in regards to both national and international actors and their efforts to align resources with the needs of disadvantaged populations.