Educational Planning

What is Educational Planning?

In its broadest generic sense, is the application of rational, systematic

analysis to the process of educational development with the aim of making
education more effective and efficient in responding to the needs and goals
of its students and society.

Its methodologies are sufficiently flexible and adaptable to fit situations that
differ widely in ideology, level of development, and governmental form. Its
basic logic, concepts, and principles are universally applicable, but the
practical methods for applying them may range from the crude and simple to
the highly sophisticated, depending on the circumstances.

Educational planning deals with the future, drawing enlightenment from the
past. It is the springboard for future decisions and actions, but it is more than
a mere blueprint. Planning is a continuous process, an initial
characterization concerned not only with where to go but with how to get
there and by what best route. Its work does not cease when a plan gets on
paper and has won approval. Planning, to be effective, must be concerned
with its own implementation-with progress made or not made, with
unforeseen obstacles that arise and with how to overcome them. Plans are
not made to be carved in stone but to be changed and adapted as the
occasion warrants. As plans for one period move into action, planning for
the next must be under way, nourished by feedback

So, before recommending any one course of action, planners must first see
what room the decision-makers have, right now, for maneuver.
They must look, for instance, at the state of the society, where it wants to go,
and what it will require, educationally, to get there; at the nature of the
students, their needs, aspirations and practical prospects; at the state of
knowledge itself and the state of the educational art and technology; and not
least of all at the innate ability of the educational system to examine itself
critically and to take intelligent action to improve its own performance.

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History

The typical kind of educational planning that went on in most places prior to
the Second World War and for many generations before had these four key
features:
(1) It was short-range in outlook, extending only to the next budget year
(except when facilities had to be built or a major new program added, in
which case the planning horizon moved forward a bit further)
(2) It was fragmentary in its coverage of the educational system; the parts of
the system were planned independently of one another.
(3) It was non-integrated in the sense that educational institutions were
planned autonomously without explicit ties to the evolving needs and trends
of the society and economy at large; and
(4) It was a non-dynamic kind of planning which assumed an essentially
static educational model that would retain its main features intact year in and
year out.

Why a new kind of planning became necessary

During the twenty-five years from 1945 to 1970 educational systems and
their environments the world over were subjected to a barrage of scientific
and technical, economic and demographic, political and cultural changes that
shook everything in sight. The consequence for education was a new and
formidable set of tasks, pressures, and problems that far exceeded in size and
complexity anything they had ever experienced.

No longer was education seen merely as a ‘non-productive sector of the

economy which absorbed consumption expenditures, it was now viewed as
an essential ‘investment expenditure’ for economic growth.

In the developing nations

Much of what was said above applies with even greater force to developing
nations during the 1950s and 1960s. Their educational needs were even
larger and more urgent, and their educational systems despite heroic efforts
to enlarge them-even less relevant and less adequate to their needs.
Starting in the 1950s the developing nations responded similarly to their new
circumstances, with an educational strategy of linear expansion.

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Very soon, however, several critical problems began to appear, which by the
end of the 1960s had multiplied into a full-blown educational crisis that
gripped virtually every developing nation in the world.

a. Wasteful imbalances within the educational system

Typically, campaigns for expanding primary, secondary and higher
education were not co-ordinated. Moreover, even at any one level the
necessary flows of components (teachers, buildings, equipment, textbooks,
etc.) were not carefully projected, scheduled and programmed.

b. Demand far in excess of capacity

The setting of bold targets, the making of large promises, and the very
expansion of education fired an increase in popular expectations and
educational demand that fed on itself and soon got out of hand.
The widening gap between educational demand and capacity was
compounded by a youth population explosion.

c. Costs rising faster than revenues

Though this enormous popular demand was an effective political pressure
for boosting education budgets, the budgets could not possibly keep pace
with the rising costs and student numbers

d. Non-financial bottlenecks
Money, however, was not only the bottleneck. At least three other kinds of
shortage plagued educational development in the 1960s:(a) the limited
administrative abilities of educational systems to plan and to transform plans
and money into desired results, (b) the long time required to recruit and
develop competent staffs for new schools and universities, and (c) the
limited capacity of local construction industries.

e. Not enough jobs for the educated

Whatever educational philosophers may have thought were the aims of
education, for most students the aim was clearly to win a good job and a
good standing in the community. For many this meant escaping with an
educational passport from the village to the bright lights of the city, there to
seek a job, most likely with the government.

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f. The wrong kind of education
Educators could not divest themselves of all responsibility for this
employment problem, however. True, the economy was not creating as
many jobs as it should. But the other face of the problem was that many
students were receiving the wrong sort of education for the world of work
they would live in.

Recent progress in theory and methodology

Discussions among educational leaders and economists in the early
1960s produced easy agreement on five propositions which formed a general
framework for later explorations.
First, educational planning should take a longer range view.

Second, educational planning should be comnprr1zensii;e. It should

embrace the whole educational system in a single vision to ensure the
harmonious evolution of its various parts.

Third, educational planning should be integrated with the plans or broader

economic and social development.

Fourth, educational planning should be an integral part of educational

management. To be effective, the planning process must be closely tied to
the processes of decision-making and operations.

Fifth, (and this proposition was slower to become evident) educational

planning must be concerned with the qualitative aspects of educational
development, not merely with quantitative expansion.