Budget financing of educational services: current trends and prospects for improvement

Abstract

Introduction. High-quality educational services play a key role in shaping the intellectual potential of the population, increasing the level of social well-being and ensuring inclusive sustainable development of the state. A prerequisite for the provision of high-quality and affordable public educational services is the proper level of their funding at the expense of various sources. The need to solve problems related to the budget financing of education, due to the limited volume and inefficient use of available financial resources, requires the development of new approaches to the organization of financing of educational services. The purpose of the paper is to substantiate the theoretical and applied principles of budget financing of educational services and to develop recommendations for its improvement. Results. The paper clarified the essence of educational services, systematized their classification features. The domestic practice of financing educational services from the State and Local Budgets of Ukraine has been described and analyzed. Conclusions. The most justified is the definition of «educational service» as an intangible benefit, which is aimed at forming competences for the future professional and / or further educational activities. Educational services can be classified according to such criteria as the source of funding, forms, components and levels of education, ownership form and organizational and legal status of the educational entity. Review of budget financing of educational services through the prism of laws and categories of dialectics made it possible to form a scientific and methodological approach to its definition as an essence, phenomenon, content, form. Important ways to improve the budget financing of educational services are the optimization of the network and the costs of educational service providers of various levels; more efficient use of available funds; intensification of such forms of public participation at the level of territorial communities, regions as a public budget in the formation of budget resources for their further allocation to improve the conditions for the provision of educational services; formation of an offer of educational services for which budgetary resources are spent, providers, especially in the field of vocational and higher education, according to the results of monitoring the demand for graduates of certain specialties in the labor market; allocation of budgetary resources between budget programs in the field of providing educational services, taking into account gender aspects; strengthening control over the effective use of budgetary resources aimed at providing educational services.