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The biggest error governments are making is to blindly push for more and better everything at all levels of education: more teachers, flashier facilities, more technology in the classroom, and more elite universities. Saudi Arabia, for example, is currently spending $13 billion on a single graduate school. All such efforts may seem sensible, but studies by academics at Munich's IFO Institute and Stanford, among other places, show that simply spending more on education doesn't yield better results. Kids don't necessarily learn more if they sit in smaller classrooms, in more modern and better-equipped schools, or even if their teachers are better-paid (as opposed to just better). According to Ludger Woessmann of the IFO Institute, merely raising per-student spending has zero effect on achievement. The United States, France, and Germany have upped spending significantly in past decades only to see performance stagnate, while countries like Sweden and Finland have boosted quality through structural reform....
Studies such as McKinsey's suggest another important way education policy should be refocused. They find that the largest returns on investment come not from funneling more money toward top or even average performers, but toward those who have been left behind. Raising the achievement of the unskilled and excluded would lead not only to individual payoffs, such as higher incomes and more meaningful lives, but also would generate big benefits for economies, such as higher productivity and greater GDP. It would also result in broad social gains—less crime, less welfare spending, and a greater sense of cohesion...
