Public Education Investment, Instructional Resources, and Student
Achievement: Cross-National Evidence from PISA 2022 in the Context of Sustainable
Development Goal 4
Reshma Shaik1,*, Hanadi Osman Diab2
1Assistant professor, Sri Venkateswara University, India
2Instructor at Lebanese International University, Lebanon
Emails: reshmaarhaan2010@gmail.com; Hanadi.diab@liu.edu.lb
Abstract
All people must have access to educational opportunities which meet their needs through Sustainable Development Goal 4.
The goal requires education systems to obtain sufficient funds and use their resources properly. The relationship between
public education spending and student academic performance remains disputed because different countries achieve different
results from their spending levels. The study employs PISA 2022 country-level scores which represent the first international
assessment data published after COVID-19 to analyze public education expenditure as a GDP share together with pupil–teacher
ratio and per-capita GDP in relation to student academic performance across three subjects. The study found that public
education funding as percentage of GDP does not connect with PISA score results across 35 countries, showing no statistical
link to tests (r = −0.095, p = 0.586). The pupil–teacher ratio serves as an effective predictor because it shows a strong
negative relationship to student performance (βˆ = −4.097, R2 = 0.312, p < 0.001). A three-variable regression model
which combines expenditure share with pupil–teacher ratio and GDP per capita explains 59% of cross-country score variance
(R2 = 0.592). High-income economies dominate the upper achievement tier, but several upper-middle-income systems—
notably Estonia and Poland—substantially outperform their GDP-predicted scores. The results show that organizations should
focus their resources on developing teaching skills.
Keywords: PISA 2022; Education expenditure; Pupil–teacher ratio; Student achievement; SDG 4; Cross-national analysis;
Education finance