ABSTRACT
The statement is remarkable because it is one of the rare cases – perhaps the only one – where it is openly admitted in an official political report that the costs of schooling are not an investment primarily to the advantage of children and their parents. Therefore, the report argues, they do not belong to those items on the budget that are open for negotiations about redistribution between different groups in society. Instead they must be understood as a general expense in line with traffic, research, defence, public administration and the like, to be regarded as beneficial for the common good and therefore shared by all taxpayers. The German report in other words argues that educational expenses do not have a status comparable with transferred resources, such as cash payments in terms of child support and tax reductions, or in-kind support such as kindergartens.
