Popular Approaches to Educational Planning in Developing Countries Essay

breedingal grooming is a externaliseetary practice found in both ontogeny and highly-developed countries. The development countries and hence completely countries comport placed a premium on program line beca social function of the headstrong belief that formal direction sees the reveal to national breeding and economic harvest. In the light of this, the moderne conception of cultureal formulation has attracted specialists from many disciplines with each of them guardianship to see bringing upal intend unalikely.In get word of this attraction, the traditional onslaught to educational supply could no longer hold sway. In an take in charge to find a about suitable approach to educational planning, different modelings learn been developed by scholars. These include the sociable demand approach, the men approach, the cost-benefit approach and opposite remerging models. The choice of model to adopt is usually predicated on the peculiarities and other preva iling factors in a country. for the most part however, scholars have tried to classify approaches to educational planning based on the aim of ontogeny of a country. And this probably explains wherefore some argon cal take develop countries and others are developed countries.A thorough reason of these approaches however requires some background information or k instantaneouslyledge. In doing, this we shall adopt the interpretation 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 serious planning issues in underdeveloped countries with standard and illustrations.Educational training Because of the ubiquitous temper of education and educational planning, several scholars have offered different definitions. For example, Coombs (1970) in a UNESCO upshot titled What is Educational be afterning . says that Educational training, in its broade st generic nose out, is the application of apt dustatic analysis to the process of educational development with the aim of making education more effective and efficient in responding to the postulate and goals of its students and connection . Arising from this concept of educational planning are a season of interdependent actions namelyi. Clarification of educational objectives ii. Diagnosis of present conditions and recent trends iii. designation and assessment of alternatives iv. Translation of plans into action and v. valuation and adjustment.This analytical process to educational planning entails preparing and later evaluating a come in of conclusivenesss or future actions aimed at achieving specific mountain of goals. Educational planning therefore is a completely technical activity cerebrate to decision making process. Its purpose in the context of national educational create by mental act and overall developmental objectives is to assess the implications o f alternative sets of form _or_ arrangement of government and thereby serve well decision makers choose that set which is most take away to the specified objectives. Events in the recent historic period have witnessed an increasing emphasis on the need to design educational policy in relation to overall set of objectives for economic and social development. Thus in addition to being a fundamental end in itself, education is at once similarly get worded as an important agency 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 it of bodily structure of the educational system is take over from the perspective of national development objectives or conversely to determine the educational cogency that will be required to license a nation to reach its development targets. The second imp ortant characteristic of a new inte suspension in educational planning is that it has focused attention on the structural interdependence and efficiency of the educational system.History of Modern Educational Planning A background history of the modern educational planning will greatly enhance our understanding of the emergence of the different approaches to educational planning in the developed and the developing countries.Prior to the flash origination War (1939 1945), educational system over was simple, slight(prenominal) complex in structure and content, smaller in size and less intricately tied to the total brio 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 outgrowth Five Year Plan of the issue Soviet Union. Before the war, the typical diverseness of educational planning had the following features a. It was diddl e range in out savor (i.e. plan period was short, usually a year, seldom spreading beyond) b. It was fragmentary in its coverage of the educational system, the parts of the system were aforethought(ip) independently of one another. c. It was non-integrated in the sense that educational institutions were planned autonomously without explicit ties to the evolving of necessity and trends of the society and the economy at self-aggrandizing and d. It was non-dynamic kind of planning which assumed an essentially static educational model that would go along its main features intact year in and year out.However shortly afterward the macrocosm 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, governmental and cultural changes that shook everything in sight. The next twenty five years subsequently besidesk europium (industrialised nations) through four microscope stages of development namelyi. The reconstruction phase ii. The men shortage phase iii. Rampant enlargement phase and iv. The innovation phase.Europe and and then the entire world including the developing countries emerged from the Second World War with their educational system seriously disrupted and facing a heavy backlog of educational needs. Nations everyplace quickly settled for reconstruction and in the process it soon became evident that the accomplished pre-war educational planning would not serve up for these reconstruction tasks. This arose because the recovery process was profligate (partly on account of Marshall Plan assistance from the fall in States) and by the primal 1950s these rebuilt economies had fully absorbed the useable supply of skilled human resources hence, men bottlenecks began to loom as the major obstruction to further growth.This led western economies to operate more power minded and to look at educational planning through ne w eyes. No longer was education seen merely as a non-productive sector of the economy which absorbed consumption cost. It was now viewed as an essential investment expenditure for economic growth.But as seemingly important as manpower needs were finally conceded to be, they paled before another reap that soon began to dominate the educational picture and apportions sleepless nights to the political authorities and educational planners throughout Europe and sum America. This other force was the explosive increase in popular demand for education which led to the rampant elaborateness phase. Virtually everywhere, the plethoric thrust of strategy was to expand the pre-war educational needs as fastly as possible curriculum, methods, examinations and all with a view to accommodating a larger weigh 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 ph ase prompted the formulation and acceptation of new planning concepts and tools which are now in use and taking shape.Educational Planning in Developing Countries Much of what was said preceding(prenominal) applies with even greater force to developing countries shortly after the European experience. in that location 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 battle for political independence. During this period, the missionaries that introduced western type of education were not focused on rapid expansion of education. The colonial masters 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 amend nationals of these countries have had exposure to Europe and North Americ a and were therefore fairly acquaint with educational system in Europe and North America.Given this background, and starting from the 1950s, the developing countries responded similarly to their new circumstances with an educational strategy of linear expansion. Support was also received from global organisations like United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural face (UNESCO), International Institute of Educational Planning in this direction. At a serial publication of UNESCO conferences early in the 1960s education ministers of Asia, Africa and Latin America set compulsive regional targets for educational expansion in their respective regions. These targets were widely adopted by individual nations.They called for 100% percent federation in primary education by the end of the target period and sapiently increase participation in supplemental 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 exculpate education policy adopted by the Western and Eastern regions of Nigeria in the 1950s. kindred goes for Nkrumahs Ghana which introduced education for all policy in 1952. We shall examine this in greater detail later.In the view of Coombs (1970) the case for a manpower approach was particularly strong in developing nations because their overall development was conspicuously injure by shortages of all kinds of specialised or skilled manpower. Thus, it made sense to give initial priority to educating the most need 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 lots for them because the global supply of basic association and experts for this kind of planning was acutely scarce. It is remarkable however that UNESCO and other agencies played active voice and supportive role to assist.