The financing of education involves expenditures of large sums of money, expenditures which have been increasing at a rapid rate in the present century. Some details of public financing of education are shown in Table 1 from which it may be seen that world public expenditure in 1972 was $223 billion (being 5.7% of world G.N.P.) and that it increased during the period 1965–72 at an annual average rate of 11.6%. The rate of increase of educational expenditure over this period was highest in Asia and the Arab States, with the developing countries as a whole spending 3.6% to 5.7% of their G.N.P. on education.