Abstract:
The study examined whether governance determines public spending's efficacy in improving education outcomes 
employing time series data in Sri Lanka. Augmented Dickey-Fuller unit root test, Johansen’s co-integration tests, and the 
Vector Error Correction Model were employed to find the study objective. The results detected that governance 
determines public spending's efficacy in improving educational status in the long run, whereas it does not determine in 
the short -run. When estimated without the interaction of governance indices, the results of education spending have a 
positive relationship with the outcome of education. In contrast, when estimated without the interaction of corruption, it 
showed a negative relationship on the outcome of education in the long- term. Though, the results of public spending with 
the interaction with political stability and the absence of violence revealed that it has virtually no impact on education 
outcomes. However, in the short run, the results found that when estimated without the interaction of governance indices 
and with the interaction of governance indices, public education spending is not significant on the outcome of education. 
The study shows that the government should improve the efficiency of using education expenditures with good 
governance and, promote the positive effect of government education expenditures as the state of governance is not 
influence educational status positively.