Financing - Lithuania

Up until the year 2002, pre-schools and schools of general education were financed from the municipal budgets on a scale that varied from one municipality to the next. School salary levels, however, were established by the central Government.

The year 2002 saw an introduction of a new system of financing general education schools which is based on a per capita (pupil basket) model (whereby money follows the pupil).
Pupil basket funds are allocated to municipalities by central government as targeted grants. Each year the Parliament establishes the basic allocations for pupil education per capita, and the total amount of pupil baskets in the school budget depends on the number of pupils at a school concerned.

The funds of pupil baskets are used for implementation of the education plan approved by the Minister of Education and Science, i.e. teaching and administrative staff, social pedagogue and librarian, teacher in-service training, textbooks and other teaching aids.

In 2008, the pupil’s with special educational needs basket was bigger by about 35.6 percent compared to that of a student attending mainstream school (inclusive settings) basket.
Every school once per year in the beginning of a school year informs its founder (municipality or the other) about the number of pupils with SEN.

The founder informs The Centre of Information Technologies of Education (under the Ministry of Education) which is responsible for completing a database of all students.

Every school founder (e.g. a municipality) also uses the Recommendations for the method of calculating a student’s ‘back pack funding’ and recommendations for calculating a student‘s back pack funding for SEN students attending mainstream settings.  Therefore the founder divides finances among its schools accordingly.
Non-teaching staff, operational resources and capital assets (movables and immovables) remain within municipal/local education budgets.

Vocational schools and advanced vocational schools are financed from the state (central government) budget, with the budget of each individual institution administered by its head who is responsible to the central authorities.

Higher education institutions, though financed from the state budget, enjoy considerable autonomy in relation to their courses and activity, and their resources are managed in accordance with their statutes.