Popular Approaches to Educational Planning in Developing Countries Essay

tuitional homework is a world-wide practice found in both underdeveloped and developed countries. The development countries and indeed all countries adjudge placed a premium on reproduction because of the persistent belief that formal education holds the key to matter development and scotch growth. In the light of this, the ultramodern conception of educational planning has attracted specialists from many disciplines with each of them tending to see educational planning differently.In view of this attraction, the traditional approach to educational planning could no longer hold sway. In an attempt to find a well-nigh suitable approach to educational planning, different models beget been developed by scholars. These include the mixer need approach, the work force approach, the cost-benefit approach and other remerging models. The natural selection of model to adopt is normally predicated on the peculiarities and other prevailing factors in a country. Generally however, scholars have tried to classify approaches to educational planning based on the level of development of a country. And this plausibly explains why some are called development countries and others are developed countries.A entire understanding of these approaches however requires some background information or k in a flashledge. In doing, this we shall adopt the definition of the concept of educational planning as provided by Coombs (1970), identify key planning questions, trace the history of modern approaches to educational planning, and bring out most important planning issues in growing countries with example and illustrations.Educational readying Because of the ubiquitous nature of education and educational planning, several scholars have offered different definitions. For example, Coombs (1970) in a UNESCO Publication entitle What is Educational Planning . says that Educational Planning, in its broadest generic intellect, is the application of keen administrationatic analysis to the puzzle out of educational development with the aim of make education more effective and efficient in responding to the needs and goals of its students and association . Arising from this concept of educational planning are a succession of dependent actions viz.i. Clarification of educational objectivesii. Diagnosis of present conditions and recent trends iii. appellation and surveyment of alternatives iv. Translation of plans into action and v. Evaluation and adjustment.This analytical process to educational planning entails preparing and subsequently evaluating a launch of decisions or future actions aimed at achieving specific set of goals. Educational planning therefore is a basically technical activity related to decision making process. Its purpose in the context of national educational programme and overall developmental objectives is to assess the implications of alternative sets of policy and thereby help decision makers choose that set which is mos t appropriate to the specified objectives. Events in the recent classs have witnessed an increasing emphasis on the need to design educational policy in relation to overall set of objectives for economic and social development. thereof in addition to being a fundamental end in itself, education is now also viewed as an important means or instrument for increasing a nations economic and social welfare. This relationship makes it necessary to consider a variety of factors that previously may have appeared irrelevant.The most important of this is to evaluate whether the size of structure of the educational system is appropriate from the perspective of national development objectives or conversely to determine the educational capacity that will be required to get a nation to reach its development targets. The second important attribute of a new interest in educational planning is that it has centre attention on the structural interdependence and efficiency of the educational syst em. register of Modern Educational Planning A background history of the modern educational planning will greatly enhance our understanding of the result of the different approaches to educational planning in the developed and the developing countries. preliminary to the Second World War (1939 1945), educational system everywhere was simple, slight complex in structure and content, smaller in size and slight(prenominal) intricately tied to the total life of nations. The only exception is probably the Soviet Union which in 1923 made an attempt to use educational planning to help realise a new society through and through what is commonly referred to as the First Five Year Plan of the four-year-old Soviet Union. Before the war, the typical merciful of educational planning had the following(a) features a. It was short range in outlook (i.e. plan period was short, usually a year, rarely spreading beyond) b. It was fragmentary in its coverage of the educational system, the parts of the system were planned independently of one another. c. It was non-integrated in the maven that educational institutions were planned autonomously without explicit ties to the evolving needs and trends of the society and the prudence at large and d. It was non-dynamic kind of planning which assumed an essentially static educational model that would retain its main features intact year in and year out.However shortly after the world war (especially from 1945 to 1970), educational system and their environment all over the world were subjected to a barrage of scientific and technological, economical, demographic, political and cultural changes that shook everything in sight. The next twenty louvre years subsequently took Europe (industrialised nations) through four phases of development namelyi. The reconstruction phaseii. The hands shortage phase iii. Rampant enlargement phase and iv. The universe phase.Europe and indeed the entire world including the developing countries emerg ed from the Second World War with their educational system seriously break off and facing a heavy backlog of educational needs. Nations everywhere right away settled for reconstruction and in the process it soon became evident that the schematic pre-war educational planning would not suffice for these reconstruction tasks. This arose because the recovery process was fast (partly on account of Marshall Plan assistance from the linked States) and by the early 1950s these rebuilt economies had fully absorbed the available tack of skilled human resources hence, manpower bottlenecks began to loom as the major blockage to further growth.This led western economies to become more power minded(p) and to look at educational planning through new eyes. No longer was education seen merely as a non-productive sector of the economy which absorbed consumption phthisis. It was now viewed as an essential investment expenditure for economic growth.But as obviously important as manpower needs w ere finally conceded to be, they paled before another force that soon began to look out on the educational scene and gives sleepless nights to the political authorities and educational planners end-to-end Europe and North America. This other force was the explosive increase in popular demand for education which led to the rampant expansion phase. almost everywhere, the dominant thrust of strategy was to expand the pre-war educational needs as rapidly as possible curriculum, methods, examinations and all with a view to conform to a larger number and proportion of the youth population. These eruptions forced the educational system of industrialised nations into yet a fourth post-war phase called the innovation phase. This phase prompted the formulation and adoption of new planning concepts and tools which are now in use and taking shape.Educational Planning in development Countries Much of what was said above applies with plane greater force to developing countries shortly afte r the European experience. There educational needs were even larger and more urgent but their educational systems unfortunately were less relevant and less adequate to their needs. It will be recalled that most of the developing nations of Africa were colonies during this period and were gradually fighting for political independence. During this period, the missionaries that introduced western type of education were not focused on rapid expansion of education. The colonial master too had other pre-occupation. Formal western education was therefore at low ebb. At the same time, the armies and the soldiers including a few educated nationals of these countries have had exposure to Europe and North America and were therefore fairly acquaint with educational system in Europe and North America.Given this background, and starting signal from the 1950s, the developing countries responded similarly to their new circumstances with an educational strategy of elongate expansion. Support was also received from global organisations like United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), International Institute of Educational Planning in this direction. At a series of UNESCO conferences early in the mid-sixties education ministers of Asia, Africa and Latin America set ambitious regional targets for educational expansion in their respective regions. These targets were widely adopted by exclusive nations.They called for 100% percent participation in primary education by the end of the target period and sharply increase participation in secondary and higher education. This expansion strategy manifests the adoption of the social demand approach to educational planning in some of the developing countries. A good example of this is the free education policy adopted by the Western and Eastern regions of Nigeria in the 1950s. Same goes for Nkrumahs Ghana which introduced education for all policy in 1952. We shall examine this in greater level later.In the view of Coombs (1970) the case for a manpower approach was specially strong in developing nations because their overall development was conspicuously incapacitate by shortages of all kinds of specialised or skilled manpower. Thus, it made sense to give initial priority to educating the most needed types of manpower for economic growth, for without such growth the desired long run expansion in education and other major social objectives would simply not be possible.Unfortunately, the developing countries were not equipped to do the kind of educational and manpower planning that the situation required and worse still, the rest of the world could not do much for them because the global supply of basic knowledge and experts for this kind of planning was acutely scarce. It is noteworthy however that UNESCO and other agencies played industrious and supportive role to assist.