Planning process

EDUCATIONAL PLANNING PROCESS

It’s the process of laying out a logical structure called a plan.

• It is cyclic in nature i.e.
• It varies from one country to another due to:

1. Degree to which the education plan forms the integral part of the economic plan
2. The weakness or strength of the statistical services
3. The features of the school systems-both private and public
4. The weakness or strength of the statistical services

There are five stages

1. Base Situation Analysis/identification of the national goals
2. Prepare the draft education plan/determine the best of the alternative
3. Approval and experimentation
4. Implementation/Decision making
5. Evaluation/ Feedback World Bank

Base Situational Analysis/identification of the national goals

• Look at education system from a wider perspective e.g. societal, enrolment rate (gross/apparent or real/net)

Answers questions such as:

1. To what extend has education assisted in achieving the laid down objectives e.g. production of manpower, enhancing national unity.
2. What is the quality of the output/outcome? Do they meet the requirements of the available job opportunities?
3. Do the output need retraining
4. Do we need to review our curriculum
5. Is education evolutionary enough

'Note:' A system that does not keep data cannot give this information thus need to keep data to be objective enough Before going to the next stage study carefully the existing government policies on education.

Preparation of Draft Education Plan/determining the best of the alternative/ Developing the Proposal

There is need to build consensus among the various stakeholders i.e. those with divergent ideologies e. g. sociologist, economists also between theorists (those with credentials e.g. educationists) and pragmatists (those with practical experiences e.g. teachers. Note

• The best plan/alternative should be in view of;

1. Relative cost
2. Benefits
3. Time requirement
4. Practical feasibility
5. Regard education Effective/efficient

• Develop a plan of action where you are, where you want to be (destination) and the means to get there: (give a brief of the strategic plan processes)

3 Lobbing, Approval & Experimentation

• Involves conditions that would influence the achievement of the objectives e.g. govt, politicians, civil society, consider the rate of inflation which may affect the cost of living, cost per student place
• The plan should not be dictated to people
• Planners to educate people to understand the document
• Lobby the ministers, Permanent Secretaries – these will be used to educate the cabinet, MPs and president

Planners are technically qualified: why should they go for MPs (some not competent). We should have a broader national interest for the plan not personal.

'''Experimentation, Pilot Planning, Pre-testing, Pilot Study'''

• This is a stage where planning is tried and tested to identify the areas of weakness
• Choose a few selected schools and sample to implement the plan. These should be representative.
• Done to avoid continuous repetition of an error
• After piloting: correct and improve the errors based on the results.

4 Implementation/Decision making*Every stakeholder should be involved i.e. teachers, head teachers, parents, government (All those who were consulted earlier)

• It’s the most difficult stage in the planning process
• It involves dealing or struggling with the reality
• This involves implementation of new methodologies, structures e.t.c. To what extent is the administrative structure flexible enough to implement this change? Most of them are conservatists maintain the status quo (resist change).
• All those involved in the implementation should be firmly in touch with daily practice, should have clarity of vision, insight and imagination
• The task is to get rid of this barrier and accommodate the change which is of much benefits
• Teachers will implement the changes through in-service training
• As we implement, evaluation is going on

1. Formative i.e. continuous
2. Summative i.e. at the end

5 Evaluation/Feedback

• It’s the last stage
• For any planning to be realistic there must be feedback from current experiences
• There must be a self-evaluating mechanism to address the following questions.

1. What are the problems with the plan
2. What have we achieved
3. What have we not achieved
4. Why have we not achieved it
5. How do we improve what we have achieved

• After evaluation (answers to these questions), we start to plan on how to improve the situation. We go back to where we started –Base Situation Analysis.