Eo

1
W a is ht
educational planning?
Philip H.Coombs
3is. 3
CGO
I
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Unesco :International Institute for Educational Planning
Fundamentals of educational planning-1
Included in the series:*

1. What i Educational Planning? s / ' P.H.C o o m b s 2. The Relation of Educational Plans to Economic and Social Planning R. Poignant 3. Educational Planning and H u m a n Resource Development F. Harbison
4. Planning and the Educational Administrator C E. Beeby . 5. The Social Context of Educational Planning C.A. Anderson 6. The Costing o ' Educational Plans j J. Vaizey, J. D.Chesswas 7. The Problems of Rural Education V. L. Griffiths
8 Educational Planning: the Adviser's Role . A d a m Curle
9. Demographic Aspects of Educational Planning T a Ngoc Chlu 1 . The Analysis of Educational Costs and Expenditure 0 J. Hallak 11. The Professional Identity of the Educational Planner A d a m Curie 12. The Conditionsfor Success in Educational Planning G.C. Ruscoe 13. Cost-benefit Analysis in Educational Planning Maureen Woodhall
*Also published in French. Other titles to appear
JWhat is educational planning?
Philip H.Coombs
\
Unesco: International Institute for Educational Planning
The Swedish International Development Authority (SIDA) has provided financial assistance for the publication of this booklet
Published in 1970 by the United Nations Educational, Scientificand Cultural Organization Place de Fontenoy, 75 Paris-7" Printed by Ceuterick, Louvain Cover design by Bruno Pfaffli
0Unesco 1970
IIEP.70/11.1/A
Printed in Belgmm
Fundamentals of educational planning
The booklets in t i series are written primarily for two groups: those hs engaged i - r preparing for--educational planning and adminisno tration,especially i developing countries;and others,less specialized, n such as senior government o f c a s and civic leaders,who seek a more fiil general understanding of educational planning and of how it can be of help t over-all national development. They are devised t be of o o use either for private study or i formal training programmes. n The modern conception of educational planning has attracted specialistsfrom many disciplines. Each of them tends t see planning o o rather differently.The purpose of some of the booklets is t help these people explain their particular points of ve to one another and to iw the younger men and women who are being trained t replace them o some day. But behind t i diversity there is a new and growing unity. hs Specialists and administratorsi developing countries are coming t n o accept certain basic principles and practices that owe something to the separate disciplines but are yet a unique contribution to knowledge by a body of pioneers who have had t attack together educational o problems more urgent and d f i u t than any the world had ever known. ifcl So other booklets i the series represent this common experience,and n provide i short compass some of the best available ideas and experin ence concerning selected aspects o educational planning. f Since readers wl vary so widely i their backgrounds,the authors il n have been given the d f i u t task of introducing their subjects from ifcl the beginning, explaining technical terms that may be commonplace t some but a mystery t others, and yet adhering to scholarly o o standards and never writing down t their readers, who, except i o n some particular speciality, are i no sense unsophisticated. This n
Fundamentals of educational planning
approach has the advantage that it makes the booklets i t l i i l nelgbe t the general reader. o Although the series,under the general editorship of D . E.Beeby r C. o the New Zealand Council for Educational Research i Wellington, f n has been planned on a definite pattern,no attempt has been made t o avoid differences,or even contradictions,i the views expressed by the n authors. I would be premature,i the Institutesv e ,t lay down t n iw o a neat and tidy o f c a doctrine i this new and rapidly evolving f e d fiil n il of knowledgeand practice.Thus,while the views are the responsibility of the authors, and may not always be shared by Unesco or the Institute, they are believed t warrant attention i the international o n market-placeof ideas. In short, t i seems the appropriate moment hs t make v s b e a cross-sectionof the opinions of authorities whose o iil combined experience covers many disciplines and a high proportion of the countries of the world.
Preface
When Philip Coombs and I w r planning this series of booklets nearly ee fiveyears ago, it seemed only logical that No. 1 should be entitled Whati Educational Planning?,and that he should wie it. That, s rt after a l w s the question those on the sideline-and many deep i l, a n thc game itself-were asking. The fact that it is now appearingjust after No. 13 i the series c l s for comment.The ostensible reason for n al the delay is that,as Director of the newly-establishedTIEP,he was far too busy to wie it; and no one acquainted with his ceaseless activity rt over t i period could reasonably doubt it. But I do,because I happen hs t know that the t m he devoted to the booklet was sufficient to let o ie him w i e it three times over i he had been willing t accept a s a i rt f o ttc concept of h s subject.The troublewas that views on educational plani ning,his own and those of others,were changing so rapidly that by the t m he came to the last paragraph of any draft,in the snatched hours ie he had t spare,he found the first paragraphs,and the approach he had o adopted t the pamphlet as a whole,unsatisfying.The irony of it was o that he himself was i no small measure responsible for the rapidity n of the change,since h s Institutewas the intellectuallyturbulent centre i around which theorists and practical planners were evolving and revising their ideas. D Coombs has finally solved h s problem neatly by coming a his r i t subjecthistorically;by tracing where thinking on educationalplanning has come from he has given an indication of its direction of travel. So,even though events and h s own fertile imagination move on before i the booklet can appear i print, we now have the data on which w n e can extrapolate to find his probable position on planning a year from now.
Preface
Just because the concept of educational planning is still so fluid, everybody engaged i it wl find i t i booklet somethingwith which n il n hs he can disagree, but he wl find very much more that he welcomes il warmly. A an old administrator, for instance, I think the author s rather underestimatesthe amount of f i l systematic long-rangeplanary ning that went on i some good school systems before it was even n respectable i some countries to refer to it as planning, I gladly n but forgive him that for the new dimension he has given t the subject o and for h s insistence that educational planning is not an esoteric exeri cise for the specialist alone but is, i some measure,part of the proper n work of almost everyone engaged i education. n There can be no one better qualified than D Coombs t wie on r o rt t i topic. Beginning as a professor of economics,he l t r became hs ae Research Director of the Ford FoundationsFund for the Advancement of Education, and then went on to serve under President John F.Kennedy as Assistant Secretary of State for Education and Cultural Affairs. A t r five and a half years of l v l and imaginative direction fe iey of the IIEP,he resigned a the end of 1968 to devote himself to h s t i own writing but continued for another year as the InstitutesDirector of Research. H has recently joined the new Center for Educational e Enquiry as Director of Studies of Educational Strategy,but still gives some t m t the Institutes research work. H has written widely on ie o e economics and educational planning,his best-knownbook being The World Educational Crisis: a Systems Analysis. I hope that Philip Coombs wl wie this booklet again a the end il rt t of another five years.
C.E. BEEBY
General editor o the series f
Contents
A few personal words to the reader

Part One
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A n i i i lcharacterization nta
Part T w o
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The ancestry of educationalplanning

Part Three
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Why a new kind of planning became necessary . . . 1. In the industrializednations . . . . . . . 2. In the developing nations . . . . . . . () Wasteful imbalanceswithin the educational system . a (b) Demand f r i excess of capacity . . . . . a n () Costs r s n f s e than revenues . . . . . c iig atr () Non-financialbottlenecks . . . . . . d () Not enoughjobsfor theeducated e . . . . () The wrong kind o education f f . . . . .
Part Four
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Recent progress i theory and methodology n 1 . The key planning questions . . . 2. The socialdemandapproach . . 3. The manpower approach . . . 4. The rate-of-return approach . .
Part Five
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Recent progress i putting theory into practice n 1 . Training and research . . . . . 2. Implementing planning . . . . .
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Contents
P r Six at A look into the future . . . . . 1 . Refinement of objectives . . . . 2. Evaluation of system performance . 3. A systems approach t educational design o 4. N e w management styles and measures . 5. Intensified research and development .
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People the world over who are concerned with the future of education -political leaders, administrators,teachers, students, and assorted citizens-are asking many pertinent questionstoday about educational planning. And well they might. Before 1950 the t r was scarcely em known i most of the world. But since then its popularity has soared. n The great majority ofthe worldseducationalleadersand governments have by now committedthemselves to the idea ofeducational planning, internationalagencies are giving it a top priority, new training programmes have been set up,social scientistsare doing research on the subject,and a large new professionalliterature is emerging. Despite al t i attention,educational planning still remains a mysl hs tery to most of the people upon whom its success depends. It is no wonder that many are pressing for answers t questions such as the o following: What i educational planning? How does it work? H o w much does s it cover? Can it be used everywhere or only i certain places? n W h o are the planners? What do they do? H o w does one become a planner? What are the dangers i planning? And the dangers i n n not planning? H o w does todays educational planning d f e from earlier forms? ifr W h y was it necessary to find a new kind? How does a country get started?What actual progress has been made? H o w much do the experts r a l know? What are the main areas ely
11
What is educational planning?
of agreement,and disagreement? Why, despite t i new educational hs planning,is there a world educational c i i ? rss What about the future? Can educationalplanning as it standstoday cope successfully with the formidable problems that lie ahead for educational systems? If not, then i what ways must planning be n further strengthened? I you are an expert and already have reasonably satisfactory f answers to these questions,then to read furthercould waste your time. But i you consider yourself a novice still looking for answers, this f booklet might help you. It is intended as a laymans introduction to educational planning,subject to the following caveats. You wl not find here definitive and authoritative answers to al il l your questions. You wl simply find the tentative and partial answers il of one individual, which he reserves the right t amend l t r The o ae. views expressed naturally reflect his particular background and vantage-point; and no claim to i f l i i i y is made. This is not said by nalblt way of apology or through false modesty but simply because this is the way things are. Educational planning as w know it today is still e too young and growing too rapidly,and is far too complex and diversi i d a subject,t be encased i any hard and fast definition,good for fe o n al time. This is why no generally accepted definition of educational l planning yet exists,much less an acceptable general theory. Nevertheless, great progress has l t l been made i both the theory aey n and practice of educational planning,and scholarsand practitionersof the subject have moved steadily toward greater agreement on many important points. W e wl t y l t r t describe some of this progress, il r a e o while not hiding the need for a great deal more. The approachtakenhere is basically historical,because i theauthors n v e the best way to understand educational planning is to observe iw how it has evolved over t m and taken many forms i many different ie n places t accommodateparticular needs. Being aware of t i heritage, o hs w wl be better equipped to answer what for us is the operative quese il tion: what kinds of educationalplanning do nations need i the 1 7 s n 90 to help them cope with the enormously d f i u t problems of educaifcl tional development they face i a rapidly changing world? n It follows from what has just been said that little good is l k l to iey come from viewing educational planning as a newscienceor a selfcontained discipline entitled t a new box on the university chart o
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like the boxes occupied by physics,economics,psychology and other recognized academic disciplines.This would tend t isolateeducational o planning-just as education and pedagogy themselves have for too long been isolated-from the main intellectualcurrents that are their natural source of nourishment. Perhaps the best way t begin our enquiry is by trying t dispel a o o few durable myths and by stating a f w preliminary propositions about e educationalplanning that wl furnish an i i i l frame of reference and il nta promptly expose the authors predilections.
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Parr O n e
A n i i i l characterization nta
Whatever educational planning is, it is certainly not a miracle drug for ailing educational systems nor, conversely,is it a devils potion that breeds only evil. Educational planning, i its broadest generic n sense,is the application of rational,systematic analysis t the process o of educational development with the aim of making education more effective and e f c e t i responding t the needs and goals of its fiin n o students and society. Seen t i light, educational planning is ideologically neutral. Its hs methodologies are sufficiently flexible and adaptable to fit situations that d f e widely i ideology,level of development,and governmental ifr n form. basic logic, Its concepts,and principles are universally applicable, but the practical methods for applying them may range from the crude and simple t the highly sophisticated, o dependingon the circumstances. I is therefore wrong to conceive of educational planning as offering t a rigid,monolithic formula that must be imposed uniformly on al l situations. I is equally wrong to conceive of educational planning as being t exclusively concerned with the quantitative expansion of education, with making things bigger but not different.This misconception arises partly because that is how educational planning has s often been o used,but it is not an inherent limitation.It arises also because planning makes extensive use of s a i t c (when they are available). But it should ttsis be remembered that a s a i t c is merely the shadow of a fact, and ttsi the fact may just as wl be qualitative as quantitative. el Educational planning deals w t the future,drawing enlightenment ih from the past. I is the springboard for future decisions and actions, t but it is more than a m r blueprint.Planning is a continuousprocess, ee
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A n initial characterization
concerned not only with where to go but with how t get there and o 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 obstaclesthat arise and with how to overcomethem.Plans are not made t be carved i stone but to be changed and adapted o n as the occasion warrants. As plans for one period move into action, planning for the next m s be under way,nourished by feedback from ut the f r t is. Planning is not the special sportof dictators-though dictators,l k ie democraticleaders,can find it a useful instrument.For planningperse i not the maker of policies and decisions;it i but the handmaiden s s t those who carry such responsibility,a high and low levels alike. o t Planning is, or should be, an integral part of the whole process of educational management,defined i the broadest sense.Itcanhelp the n decision-makersa al levels-from classroom teachers to national t l ministers and parliaments-to make better-informed decisions. It can do t i by helping them see more clearly the specific objectives i queshs n tion,the various options that are available for pursuing these objectives,and the l k l implications of each.Planning can help to attain iey larger and better aggregate results within the lmt of available iis resources. To achieve such benefits,however,planning must use a wide-angle lens through which a great many interlocking variables can be put i n focus and al of them seen as parts of a dynamic organic whole-as l a system susceptibleof system analysis. So,before recommending any one course of action,planners must first see what room the decision-makers have,rightnow,formanceuvre. They must look, for instance, at the state of the society, where it wants t go, and what it wl require, educationally,to get there;at o il the nature of the students,their needs,aspirations and practical prospects;a the state of knowledge i s l and the state of the educational t tef art and technology;and not least of al at the innate a i i y ofthe edul blt cationalsystem to examinei s l c i i a l and t take intelligentaction tef r t c l y o t improve is own performance. One of the central tasks o educao t f tional planning is to determinehow best t keep these intricateinternal o and external relationshipsofthe educational system i reasonablebaln ance under dynamically changing circumstances,and to bend them constantly i the required direction. n The foregoing,of course,are ideal criteria which no educational
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What i educational planning? s
planning has ever fully lived up to. But then, during most of educations long history it did not need to, because l f for educational sysie tems was considerably simpler then than now. Prior to the Second World War, educational systems everywhere were less complex in structure and content, smaller in size and less intricately tied to the total l f of nations. Moreover, educational ie institutions and the world around them were growing and changing a a considerably slower pace. Thus there was minimal risk that t serious imbalances and maladjustments might suddenly erupt amongst the constituent parts of an educational system or between the system and its client environment. None the less, even in these simpler times there had to be some s r ot of planning, as part of the normal care and feeding of educational institutions. But except for t m s of extraordinary social ferment, it ie could be a simple and limited form, an inconspicuous and routine aspect of educational administration which hardly warranted the concern of scholars and statesmen,or even a special label. This is no longer the case. The world of education has been changing rapidly and drastically since the end of the Second World War, due to a combinationof now familiar revolutionary forces that have shaken the entire world. Later we wl examine the kind of impact which these il revolutionary forces have had on education and how a l this has l created the need for a fundamentally new kind of educational planning. It wl pay us to look first, however, at some of the historical anteceil dents of this new educational planning.
1 6
Part Two
The ancestry of educational planning
Todays educational planning can claim an unbroken ancestry running back to ancient times. Xenephon tells ( n the Lacedaemonian i Constitution) how the Spartans,some 2,500years ago,planned their education to fit their wl defined military,social and economic objecel tives. Plato i h s Republic offered an education plan to serve the n i leadership needs and p l t c l purposes of Athens. China during the oiia Han Dynasties and Peru of the Incas planned their education to fit their particular public purposes. These early examples emphasize the important function of educational planning i linking a societys educational system to its goals, n whatever these goals may be. Some l t r examples show how educaae tionalplanning hasbeen resortedt i periods of great social and intelo n lectualfermentt help chaizge a societyto fit new goals.The architects of o such plans were usually creative social thinkers who saw i education n a potent instrumentfor achieving reformsand attaining the goodl f ie. Thus John Knox i the mid-16th Century proposed a plan for a n national system of schools and colleges expressly designed to give the Scots a felicitouscombination of spiritualsalvation and material w l el being. The heady days of the new liberalism i Europe, i the l t n n ae 18th and early 19th Centuries, produced a bumper crop of proposals bearing such titles as An Education Plan and The Reform of Teaching,aimed a social reform and u l f . One of the best known t pit of these was DiderotsPlan dune Universitipour l Gouvernement de e Russie,prepared a therequestofCatherine11. Anotherwas Rousseaus t plan for providing an educationto every Polish citizen.(This one even went into such details as when to i f i tcorporalpunishmenton recalcinlc trant p p l ) uis.
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The e r i s modern attempt t employ educational planning t alet o o help realize a newsociety was, of course,the F r t Five-YearPlan of is the young Soviet Union in 1923. Though is initial methodologies t w r crude by todaysstandards,it was the start of a continuous and ee comprehensive planning process which eventually helped transformin l s than f f y years-a nation which began two-thirds l i e a einto es it iltrt one of the worlds most educationally developed nations.Its ideological orientation aside,t i Soviet planning experience offers a variety hs of useful technicallessonsfor other countries. The several historical examples of educational planning cited above varied greatly i scope, objectives and complexity. Some applied t n o whole nations, others to individual institutions; some undoubtedly were farmore effectivethanothers;somewere episodic,others involved a continuousprocess over a long period;some w r i a highly authoree n itarian setting,others i a more democraticand pluralistic milieu. Al n l have something t teach, but none had a l the features required of o l modern educational planning. The ancestry oftodayseducationalplanning does not end,however, with the more visible and dramatic examplesjust cited.There has been a l along a much more ubiquitous and routine sort of planning which l thoseresponsibleforadministering educationalinstitutionshave always had t do,ever since such institutionsexisted. o Take, by way of illustration,the administrative head of a typical local public school d s r c in the 1920s.Each year he was obliged t itit o look ahead and t make various preparations for the next academic o year. A a minimum he had to estimate how many students there t would be,how many classrooms,teachers, desksand books would be needed to serve them adequately,how much money al t i would l hs require,where the money would come from,and how and when it would be spent. These various projections culminated i a proposed n budget for the next academic year and ended ultimately i a series of n decisionsand actions.This was educationalplanning,even i it seldom f wore that label.I was taken for granted as a normal part of the edut cationaladministrators job,and i he was a poor planner he was soon f i trouble. n Frequently this process took an extremely simple form.The planning for a small independent school or college could sometimes have been done on the back of an envelope.But as educational institutions and systems grew larger and more complex, and as the budget and appropriations process became more formal, the planning process
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The ancestry of educational planning
i s l acquired greater sophistication and formality.Y t the basic tasks tef e and principles were much the same.The essential aim was to provide for the continuity and v a i i y of educational establishments,and to iblt e f c such gradual expansion and improvement as the circumstances fet seemed to warrant. By and large,however, the aims of education and the value of its contributions to students and society were not subjected to annual scrutiny as part of planning. They were taken as much for granted as ee the a r that was inhaled. So w r the curriculum and methods of i instruction,and the all-powerfulexamination system. Therefore the main focus of planning was on the mechanics and logistics of education,on the needs of the system,not of the students and society. T o sum up, the typical kind of educational planning that went on i most places prior to the Second World War and for many generan tions before had these four key features:(1) it was short-range i outn look, extending only to the next budget year (except when f c l t e aiiis had to be b i t or a major new programme added,i which case the ul n planning horizon moved forward a b t further); ( ) it wasfragmentary i 2 i its coverage of the educational system;the parts of the system were n planned independently of one another;() it was non-integrated i the 3 n sense that educational institutions w r planned autonomously withee out explicit ties to the evolving needs and trends of the society and economy a large;and ( )it was a non-dynamickind ofplanning which t 4 assumed an essentially static educational model that would retain its main featuresintact year i and year out. n There were notable exceptionst theforegoingdescription,ofcourse, o but it is perhaps a f i picture of the mode. The important thing is ar that it worked. Educational institutions naturally had their share of problems and administrators their quota of headaches. But, on the whole,education ran along f i l smoothly i its accustomed groove ary n under t i regimen of simple planning.It did,that is. until the Second hs World War opened a new era of incredible change that was destined to touch every facet of lf on man's planet,and to crack the foundaie tions of h s old institutions. i
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Part Three
W y a new kind of planning h

became necessary
During the twenty-five years from 1945 t 1970 educational systems o and their environments the world over were subjected to a barrage of s i n i i and technical,economic and demographic,political and culcetfc tural changes that shook everything i sight. The consequence for n education was a new and formidable set oftasks,pressures,and problems that far exceeded i size and complexity anything they had ever n experienced.They did their heroic best t cope with these, but their o tools of planning and management proved grossly inadequate i the n new situation.In retrospect one has t marvel that they accomplished o al they did in the circumstances and somehow managed t avoid l o collapsing under the strain. By examining a few of the highlights of t i extraordinaryexperience hs w can gain a clearer understanding of why a new kind of planning e became imperative and what some of its major features would have t be. Though our primary focus wl be on the developing nations, o il it wl help our perspective to look first at the developed world. il
1. In the industrialized nations

Speaking very roughly,the industrializednations have passed through three educational phases from 1945 t 1970 and now find themselves o i a perplexing fourth phase: (1) the Reconstruction Phase; ( ) the n 2 Manpower Shortage Phase; () the Rampant Expansion Phase; and 3 () the Innovation Phase. Each yielded a new crop of planning prob4 lm. es The battle-scarred nations of Europe emerged from the Second
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W h y a new kind of planning became necessary
World War with their educational systems seriously disrupted and facing a heavy backlog of educational needs. Most nations quickly set about trying t return education t something l k normalcy, o o ie by launching crash programmes of school construction,teacher recruitment,emergency training and the l k . ie I was soon evident that conventionalpre-wareducational planning t would not s f i e for these reconstruction tasks.Massive programmes, ufc that deeply affected many communities and imposed a heavy burden on severely damaged and strained economies,required broader and more complex programming and scheduling, longer view ahead,and a morecarefulchecking oftheir economicfeasibilityand impacts.Though the planning methods that were improvised t meet this situation had o many shortcomings,they did do some good and they also conditioned educational authoritiesfor still greater planning problems yet to come. To cite one example: even before the war had ended, the United Kingdom-notwithstanding its decentralized system of education and its traditionallack of enthusiasm for planning i general-enacted the n Education A t of 1944, c which required each of the 1 6 local education 4 authorities i England and Wales t prepare a development plan for n o submission to the central Ministry of Education.Although the resulting local plans did not add up t a coherent national plan, balanced o with available resources,many of them none the less reflected considerable ingenuity and technical competence i their orderly long-term n projections of local population and enrolments, demographic shifts, schoollocations,teacher requirements,school financial needs and prospective local tax yields. France went about things differently,i keeping with its more cenn tralized system of education and government.In 1946 it inaugurated comprehensive investment planning for the whole economy, then in 1 51 incorporated nationwide capital planning for education into the 9 Second Five-Yearplan.Other Western European countries tackled the planning of educational reconstruction i various ways befitting their n particular traditions and preferences. The Soviet Union, faced with the most massive task of a l b i t upon her pre-warplanning experil, u l ence,while the newly socialized countries of Eastern Europe turned t the Soviet Union for new planning models. o Meanwhile even i the United States, where the idea of planning n was still anathema, local and state education authorities resorted t o more elaborate planning then ever before t handle the backlog of posto poned school constructionneeds,t meet the educational demands of o
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returning veterans, and to prepare for the educational consequences of the war-inducedbabyboom. Al this,however,was but a foretaste of things to come.Educational l ee systems w r soon physically restored,but they would never return to pre-war normalcy. Soon they would find themselves in the manpower business,called upon t m e the larger and more sophistio et cated human resource requirements of expanding post-wareconomies. More important,they would soon be h t by an explosive increase in i student numbers provoked in part by demographic factors but mainly by the post-warurge to democratize educational opportunity on a grand scale. The manpower phase deserves a pause, less because of its practical impact on European educational planning than because of its sidee f c s on developingnations,and the great influenceit had on arousing fet the interest of economists i educational development. n The severely disrupted Western European economies recoveredtheir pre-war production levels with surprising speed and proceeded to climb t new heights. This quick recovery,it is worth noting, was o mainly due t large and well-planned infusions of fresh capital o (through the Marshall Plan) into economic systems that were already endowed with sophisticated economic institutions and a ready supply of modern human s i l and know-how. kls (This was not the case with developingnationswhen their turn came). But by the early 1950s these rebuilt economies had f l y absorbed the available supply of skilled ul human resources;hence manpower bottlenecks began t loom as the o major obstacle to further growth. This led Western economists t become more manpower-mindedand o t look a education through new eyes. N o longer was education seen o t merely as a non-productivesector of the economy which absorbed consumption expenditures, was now viewed as an essential investit ment expenditurefor economic growth. Wearing t i impressive new hs investmentlabel, education could make a more effective claim on national budgets.But,t justify the claim,educatorsthemselveswould o have t become more manpower-minded. o They would have t plan o and t y to govern their student intakes and outputs t fit the pattern r o of manpower requirements c r i i d by the economists t be necessary etfe o for the economysgood health. This was a distasteful price to pay,however,for educators nurtured on the liberal,humanistic tradition.They preferred to fightfor bigger budgets on higher ground,arguing that education was thehuman right
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ofevery child.I education also helped the economy so much the better, f but it should not be the economysslave.Education was a good thing, hence the more of it the better,of whatever kind or level.Above a l l, the educatorsinsisted,every child was first and foremostan individual, not a manpower s a i t c ttsi. Educators were frankly fearful that the materialistically-minded economistswould subvert the traditional noble values and purposes of education.A times the interchangebetween these new a l e resembled t lis a dialogue of the deaf.They spokethrough differentjargonsand often used the same terms to mean different things.It was onlylater,when they had educated each other,that their seeming differences began to evaporate and they discovered many mutual interests. But as obviously important as manpower needs w r finally conee ceded to be,they paled before another force that soon began to dominate the education sceneand give sleeplessnightsto authoritiesthroughout Europe and North America. This other force was the explosive increasein popular demand for education,which l d to the Rampant e Expansion Phase. Economistscouldtalka ltheywanted toaboutthenationsmanpower l needs,but what parents instinctively put first was their own childrens needs.Regardlessofwhat educatorsmight say aboutthenobleand nonmaterialistic aims ofeducation, o most parents and theirchildrenedut cation was first and foremostthe best route to a better job and better l f .The power of t i human impulse was something that every politiie hs cian understood and none could afford to ignore, whatever his ideology. Thus from the mid-1950sonward,i response to t i impulse,there n hs was a pell-mell expansion of enrolments throughout the developed world, hitting hardest a the secondary and university levels. Its t main propellant was not demography or the needs of the economy (though both these were f c o s , but the increased popular demand atr) which persistently outpaced the capacity of educational systems to s t s y i. aif t It must be added that i most of the developed nations of the west n -France being the chief exception--new forms of educational planning played a minor role at best i this extraordinary expansion.And n even in France,where nationwide educational planning f r al levels o l was closely integrated with over-all investment planning for the economy i five-yearcycles, it was limited to the planning OF physical n f c l t e ; it did not include such c i i a factors as teacher supply, aiiis rtcl
23
recurrent costs, manpower requirements, and needed educational reforms and innovations of various sorts. Virtually everywhere the dominant thrust of strategy was t expand o pre-war educational models as rapidly as possible-curriculum, methods,examinationsand all-with a v e t accommodating a larger iw o number and proportion ofthe youth population and thereby democratizingeducation.There w r such exceptional amendments t the old ee o system as the comprehensive high school i Sweden,and the addition n of non-classicalstreams t the French lycte. And yet,compared t the o o vast changes taking place i their student body, i the economy and n n society,and i the state of knowledge i s l ,most educational systems n tef had changed remarkably little by the l t 1960s. Lacking the means ae for c i i a self-scrunityand self-renewal,they remained the captives rtcl of their own Clitist traditions and pedagogical habits a a t m when t ie they w r moving rapidly toward becoming mass educational systems. ee This clinging to old forms created increasing maladjustments between educational systems and their economy, society and students. Like a boiling pot over a high flame with its ld clamped tight, they i were bound sooner or later to explode. And t i they did. For most hs of the industrialized world 1967 was the year of the Great Education Explosion-marked by violent student protests,sympathetically supported by many teachers,parents and other critics of traditionaleducation.The events of 1967, however,w r but the beginning ofa succesee sion of explosions that promised t persist i one form or another o n until educational institutions finally renewed themselves and m t the e public test of relevance. These eruptions forced the educational systems of industrialized nations into yet a fourth post-warphase, the InnovationPhase,where they now are. What wl come of it-whether there wl i fact be il il n major innovationsand transformationst bring educationinto reasono able adjustment with its environment,or whether continuing inertia wl invite bigger and more damaging explosions-remains to be seen. il But t i much a least is clear;i order t achieve other needed innohs t n o vations there wl have t be some major innovations i educational il o n planning i s l .Planning that merely serves a strategy of linear expantef sion wl no longer do;planning must now serve a strategy of educail tional change and adaptation.This wl require new types of planning il concepts and tools which are only now taking shape.
24
W h y a n e w kind of planning became necessary
2.In the developing nations

Much of what was said above applies with even greater force t o developing nations during the 1950s and 1960s.Their educationalneeds were even larger and more urgent,and their educational systemsdespite heroic efforts to enlarge them-even less relevantand less adequate to their needs. Starting in the 1950s the developing nations responded similarly t o their new circumstances, with an educational strategy of linear expansion. A a series of Unesco conferences early in the 1960s education t ministers of Asia, Africa and Latin America set ambitious regional targets for educational expansion i their respective regions to be n achieved by 1980 (1975 in the case of Latin America). These targets were widely adopted by individual nations. They called f r 1 0 per o 0 cent participation i primary education by the end ofthe target period, n and sharply increased participation rates i secondary and higher edun cation. Rough estimates of costs and revenues were made, which, even though tending on the optimistic side,showed that the attainmentof these targets would require a large increase in the proportion of the GNP devoted t education plus a large expansionofaid from the outo side.The Unesco regional conferencesmade certain qualitativerecommendations as w l ,but it was clear t al that the prime measuring el o l rod of future progress-and the main basis for comparing nationswould be increasesi enrolments a i t c to reach to the targets.With n ttsis t i as their frame of reference,the developing nations moved enthushs i s i a l into campaigns of rapid educational expansion. atcly It was clear even to the most ardent believers in laissez-faire that they would have to plan their way carefully to make the best use of their acutely scarce resources.The case for a manpowerapproach was particularly strong i developing nations because their over-all n development was conspicuously handicapped by shortages of a l kinds l of specialized manpower. Thus it made sense to give i i i l priority nta to educating the most needed types ofmanpower for economicgrowth, for without such growth the desired long-runexpansion of education and other major social objectives would simply not be possible. The trouble was,however, that these nations were not equipped to do the kind of educational and manpower planning that the situation required. Nor was the rest of the world equipped to help them much, because the global supply of basic knowledge and experts for this
25
kind of planning was acutely scarce. To their credit,Unesco,the ILO and various bilateral aid agencies and foundations did their best t o recruit the most qualified advisers they could find t fill the mounting o requests of developing nations for help on planning. While most of these experts succeeded i making valuable contributions of one type n or another, their assistance t educational planning was perforce o largely limited t what they could improvise on the job.There was no o good textbook on the subject i any language i the early 1960s, nor n n anyone who was wl equipped to wie one. el rt But action could not wait for knowledge and s i l t catch up. So kls o educational leaders i the developing world moved bravely ahead t n o push their enrolments upward toward the targets as f s as possible. at And up they went,a remarkable speed. t Very soon, however, several c i i a problems began t appear, rtcl o which by the end of the 1 6 s had multiplied into a full-blownedu90 cational crisis that gripped virtually every developing nation i the n world. It is instructive t look b i f y a some of these problems for o rel t what they can tell us about the concrete tasks which educationalplanning must now cope with. Though they varied i form and intensity from place t place,most n o existed,i one guise or another,almost everywhere. n a. Wasteful imbalances within the educational system Typically,compaigns for expanding primary, secondary and higher education were not co-ordinated. Moreover,even a any one level the t necessary flows of components (teachers,buildings, equipment,textbooks,etc.) were not carefully projected, scheduled and programmed. The inevitable result was a series of self-defeatingdisparities. In one familiar type-case, school constructionreceived an excessive priority while the expansion of teacher training and textbook supplies was short-changed. eventual result was that the new pupils turned The up i new classrooms only to find themselves with no teacher or textn books. Sometimes the reverse happened; there were teachers and pupils but no classrooms. Almost invariably there w r not enough ee books. With any one important component missing,the others w r ee seriously handicapped. In another type-caseresources w r poured into university expanee sion while secondary education lagged behind. The result was that new university places stood idle for lack of enough qualified candidates
26
from secondary schools. O ,conversely,secondary enrolments w r r ee sharply expanded and universities were soon overwhelmed by far more entrants than they could cope with. b. D e m a n d far in excess oj capacity The setting of bold targets,the making of large promises,and the very expansion of education f r d an increase i popular expectations and ie n educational demand that fed on i s l and soon got out of hand. tef The widening gap between educational demand and capacity was compoundedby a youthpopulation explosionwhich turned the original expansion targets into moving targets. While children clamouring to go to school is a joyous sight in any land,it can also be an unnerving sight for school authorities who must turn a large number of them away.There is such a thing as too much of a good thing,coming too soon. This is what happened to popular demand for education.
c. Costs rising faster than reoeizues
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 studentnumbers.In some countries the economic f a i i i y ofthe targets had never been tested;they restesblt ed on blind faith that somehow the necessary means for achieving them would arrive.Where they had been tested theircosts had typically been under-estimated and prospective income over-estimated. Thus the targets proved economically unrealistic. As the real facts became evident and the financial squeeze came on, there were three possible escapes.O n e was t cut back the i i i l taro nta gets,but t i was p l t c l y d f i u t A second was to cut costs by hs oiial ifcl. raising educational efficiency;t i looked good i theory but was very hs n hard t do i practice.The third escape route was to spread available o n resources thinner over more and more students,but a the expense of t quality and effectiveness.This was the main route taken.It permitted the s a i t c of enrolmentsto keep rising along the target path,somettsis t m s even above it, but it seemed a dubious kind of progress when ie one delved behind the grossenrolment s a i t c and saw the shockingly ttsis high dropout and repeater rates, or v s t d over-crowded classrooms iie and observed what was going on there i the name of education. n
27
d. Non-financialbottlenecks Money, however, was not only the bottleneck. A l a t three other t es kinds of shortage plagued educational development i the 1960s: n ( ) the limited administrative a i i i s of educational systems to plan a blte and t transform plans and money into desired results,( ) the long o b t m required to recruit and develop competent s a f for new schools ie tfs and universities, and () the limited capacity of local construction c industries. These administrative, human and physical bottle-necksbecame the ultimate determinants of how fast and i what directions an educan tional system could develop and how much financial help it could profitably absorb.Some systemsfound themselvesi theawkwardposin tion of having large construction credits they could not spend,fine new f c l t e they could not staff, equipment they could not use, aiiis attractiveand urgently needed schemesthey could not implement.Long delays in achieving fr agreements and then actual deliveries on im foreign aid projects exacerbated these d f i u t e . ifclis e Not enough jobsfor the educated . Whatever educationalphilosophers may have thought were the aims of education,for most students the aim was clearly t win a good job and o 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 l k l with the government. iey A first the job prospects were very good; the newly independent t nations were desperately short of educated manpower of al sorts to l s a f their expanding government services, to replace expatriates,and tf t get on with the mammoth tasks of nation-building. f e being o Atr starved of formal education for centuries, it seemed inconceivable that they would find themselves a decade l t r with more educated ae people than their economy seemed able t use. o Yt this is precisely what happened,in one country after another. e The phenomenon of the educated unemployed appeared first i such n countries as India,the Philippines,the United Arab Republic,and i n several Latin American nations that had made an e r i r start.But by ale the l t 1960s the unthinkable was even beginning to happen i some ae n of the most newly independent African nations.The reasons,i retron spect,are clear.
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The employment market pendulum had swung sooner and more abruptlythan eventhe manpower expertshad anticipated. a smalland In simple economy it does not take a very large s i t i the numbers to hf n produce a major change i the employment market balance-and a n traumatic shock for many students and their families. O n the supply side, after a few years of educational production lag,relatively large numbers of graduates began t come on t the o o market. Simultaneously,many who had gone abroad t study were o now returning with degrees. Thus the supply curve shot up fast. O n the demand side, the vacant government posts by now had been largely Uled by the best qualified people available a the t m ,even t ie though t e r qualificationsoften fell wl below the o f c a norms,and hi el fiil below those of the newly educated who would later come on t the o market. The private sector, small i relation t the government as an n o employer of educated manpower,was creating new jobs only slowly, the more so as it turned toward labour-saving methods and equipment, sometimes prodded by new minimum wage laws. Thus the demand fell sharply,and what had been a sellers market for educational manpower turned into a buyersmarket. The one bright spot i al t i was that the educationalsystem itself, n l hs as a buyer,could now begin to hire better qualified people as teachers, though many came grudgingly,because teaching was a l s resort on at their list ofjob preferences. Selective manpower shortagescontinued t e i t i some specialized o xs n categories,especially where no local training f c l t e were available. aiiis But the main thrust of the pendulum was from manpower shortages t manpower surpluses. This raised serious new issues of policy and o required a wholesale reappraisaland adjustment of earlier assumptions and expectations by government and individuals alike. This was a painful process. One particularly painful aspect was the accelerated brain drain that set in,prompted i part by the diminishing job prospects back n home as seen by students who had gone abroad t study. Not only o were their talents lost t their own nation when they failed t return, o o but so w r the precious resources that had been invested i their ee n earlier education. I was tempting for some observerst leap to the simplistic conclut o sion that education had been over-expandedand therefore should now be throttled back to match the economysjob-creatingpotential. But a deeper look suggested that the r a solution lay mainly within the el
29
economy itself. I needed re-structuringand adjusting so as t make t o better use of available educated manpower.The most astute manpower and educationalplanners pointed out that the prime goal of economic development should not be simply t raise the s a i t c of GNP but o ttsis t raise the level of employment and improve the distribution of o income. Therefore the concern of manpower planners should not be limited t breaking human resource bottlenecks t economic growth ; o o it should be with maximizing the number of jobs consistent with a reasonable rate of growth. The practical ways of pursuing this high employmentpolicy,however,were not too evident and would certainly be d f i u t a best. ifcl t
f. The wrong kind of education

Educators could not divest themselves of al responsibility for t i l hs employmentproblem,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 receivingthe wrong sort of education for the world of work they would live in. More than a f w critics had openly castie gated the still dominant imported 19th-centuryeducation as being ill-suitedt the needs of poor nations trying t modernize themselves. o o But it was doubtfuli even a more modern ofeducation designed f type t fit young people for a modern job and c t life was the right eduo iy cation for the great majority of youngsters who w r destined t live ee o out their lives i rural areas. Instead of conditioning them for leadern ship i rural and agricultural development,which was indispensable n t over-allnational development,it would tend t alienate them from o o their rural surroundings. I was one thing,however,to know what was wrong with an outt moded and misplaced curriculum,but quite anotherthing t know how o t fx it. Better alternatives were far from clear,and even where clear o i they w r exceedingly d f i u t time-consuming expensivet adopt. ee ifcl, and o Here and there, staunch efforts were made t replace the old curo riculum and teaching methods with something more relevant, often with rewarding results. But elsewhere the system ground on day after day i its old rut,while many of its leaders and teachers,knowing f l n ul wl the wastes involved,f l helpless to change i. el et t Irrelevanteducation was one ofthe heavy prices paid for the strategy of linear expansion and for the impressively mounting enrolment stati t c . Another was the tragedy of exhorbitant drop-out rates, the sis
30
hundreds of thousands of youngsterswho went to school but lf too et soon t learn even to read. o The s x problems just described conspired to cause a vast waste of i precious economic resources and human potential,a serious handicap to national development,and millions of individual heartaches. But what was there t do about i ? A first-rateeducational system,wl o t el adapted tothe needs of its environment and e f c e t i its use of fiin n resources,could not be built i a day-or even a single decade. n In retrospect,w cannot seriously fault the valiant efforts made t e o develop education i the 1950s and 1 6 s by developing nations and n 90 by those who sought t help them.I history could be replayed with o f al the advantages of hindsight, undoubtedly many things could be l done somewhat better. Better planning would surely have helped,but no amount of planning could have drastically altered the basic constraints, compulsions and aspirations that primarily dictated the course of events.The astonishingthing is not that so much went badly el but that so much more went w l .The net balance of the recordthough it cannot be measured with precision and many ofthe benefits have yet to be f l y reaped-certainly appears t be heavily on the ul o positive side. Be that as it may, our purpose here is neither t praise nor criticize o the past but to discover its lessonsfor the future.In trying to discover these lessons we should guard against the naive notion that better planning-the very best that one can imagine-would have eliminated the problems we have just reviewed.Their basic causes were deeply rooted i the landscape and the problems w r bound to arise. But n ee better planning,had it been available,could undoubtedly have helped things to go somewhatbetter.I could have helped especially by enabt ling policy-makersand al others concernedto see theseemerging probl lems sooner and i clearer perspective, to identify more clearly the n various options available for dealing with them, and to assess the relative merits and f a i i i y of these alternatives.In brief,good eduesblt cational planning might have given them clearer eyes t see wt and o ih a better informedjudgement with which t face decisions. o The same can be said for the industrialized nations,whose educational record i t i period-considering their far greater human and n hs material resources,the greater inherent strengths of their educational systems and their considerably longer experience-could hardly be said to excel the record of the developing nations.
31
The impression should not be left, however, that while al these l ee troubles w r boiling up nothing was being done to create and apply more effective kinds of educational planning. A great deal was being done, as a quick glance at the facts wl show. il
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Part Four
Recent progress i theory and methodology n
Discussions among educational leaders and economists i the early n 1 6 s produced easy agreement on five propositions which formed a 90 general framework for l t r explorations. ae First,educationalplanning should take a longer range view. It should i fact have a short-range(one or two y a s , a middle-range(four t n er) o five years) and a long-range perspective(ten to fifteeny a s . Obviously er) its vision wl grow less precise the farther ahead it looks. But considil ering the long lead timerequired to increase educational capacity and to a t r educational output-to enlarge, for example, the prole duction of doctors or engineers.or even of elementary school teachers -it is necessary to plan years ahead. Second, educational planning should be comnprr1zensii;e.I should t embrace the whole educational system i a single vision to ensure the n harmonious evolution of its various parts. Moreover,it should t y t r o extend its vision t importanttypes of non-fonnal education and traino ing to ensure their effective integration with formal education and with the priority needs and goals of society. Third.educational planning should be integrated with the plans or broader economicand socialdevelopment.Ifeducation is to contribute most e f c i e y t individual and national development,and t make fetvl o o the best use of scarce resources,it cannot go its own way, ignoring the r a i i s of the world around it. elte Fourth, educational planning should be an integral part o educaf tional management. To be effective, the planning process must be closely t e to the processes of decision-making and operations. I id f isolated in a back room it becomes a purely academic exercise whose chiefe f c is to frustrate those involved. fet
33
Ffih, (and this proposition was slower t become evident) eduo cational planning must be concerned with the yualitatizre aspects of educationaldevelopment,notmerely with quantitativeexpansion.Only thuscan it help to make education more relevant, f i i n and effective. efcet Like the Ten Commandments,these five propositions soon enjoyed universal endorsement in principle,but the problem was t get them o obeyed. This required three sorts of action: (I) the development of specific concepts and methodologies, 2 thetrainingofpeople to apply () them, and () the adaptation of organizational and administrative 3 arrangements t enable planning t work. In the present section we o o wl deal with the first of these, leaving the other two for the next il section.
1. The key planning questions

As useful as they w r as a starting point,the above propositions did ee not really address the central planning questions which every nation faces, questions which often get answered by default without ever being explicitly asked.The questions(appliedt a specifiedt m period) o ie are essentially these: 1. What should be the priority objectives and functions of the educational system and of each of its sub-systems(including each level, each institution,each grade,each course,each c a s ? ls) 2.What are the best of the alternativepossible ways ofpursuing these various objectives and functions? (This involves a consideration of alternative educationaltechnologies, theirrelative costs,t m requireie ments, practical feasibility,educational effectiveness,etc. 3.How much of the nations ( r communitys) resources should be o devoted t education at the expense of other things? What appear o t be the lmt offeasibility,i terms not only of financialresources o iis n but real resources? What is the maximum of resources that education can effectively absorb in the given time period ? 4 W h o should pay? How should the burden of educational costs and . sacrifices be distributed as between the direct recipients ofeducation and society a large, and among different groups i society? How t n wl adapted is the present public f s a structure,and other sources el icl o of educational revenue,t attaining a socially desirable distribution of the burden and at the same t m a sufficient flow of necessary ie income to education?
34
Recent progress i theory and methodology n
5.H o w should the t t l resources available to education (whatever oa the amount may be) be allocated among different levels,types and components ofthe system ( . .primary U. secondary21. higher educaeg tion ; technical U. general education; teachers salaries U. building and equipment U. textbooks,free meals,scholarships,e c ) ? t. Educatorsand economists, well as sociologists,politicansand philoas sophers,are l k l to approach and answer these questions in quite iey different ways,reflecting differences i their background,outlook and n styles of thinking.Since t i fact bears heavily on how different groups hs did approach educationalplanning i the l s decade,w should pause n at e to note how educational administratorsand economists were inclined to think about these matters. The good educational administratoris a hybrid of idealist,pragmatist and politician. H appreciates other important social needs, but e t him education is clearly Number One; it commands his prime o attention and loyalty. H e believes devoutly that every young person shouldget al the education he can use,but he knows t i is not feasible l hs immediately.So a budget t m he asks for al he thinks he can effect ie l t v l use,plus something extra,for he knows he wl get less than he iey il asks for.H then fightshard to get al he can and finally ends up with e l a compromise budget which he proceeds to spend as fully and effect v l as possible.Hs record of spending right up to the budget ceiling iey i i seldom matched in other sectors. s T o a man i t i situation, most of the key planning questions n hs posed above seem highly theoretical and impractical.Moreover they cover too broad an area; as he sees it his resposibility is t figure how o much money is needed for education and how to spend it well. L t e somebody else worry about where the money should come from. H e does not take no an answer easily,for he knows al too well how for l many children there are waiting t be educated and roughly what this o wl cost.Anyone who withholds the necessary funds assumes responil e s b l t f r penalizing their future.H is their champion;let those who iiiy o would deprive the nationsyouth stand up and be counted. A this point the economist is at a tactical disadvantage,feeling l k t ie Scrooge and the enemy of children.H may be equally idealistic and e may equallylovechildrenand valueeducation, he is lessapragmatist but and politician and more a conceptualizer and analyst than the educational administrator. H e has never had to run a school system,win a budget or m e a payroll.H is accustomed t viewing the economy et e o as a whole and t seeking an optimum balance among its sectors i o n
35
the face of over-allresourcelmt. iis Thus,while the economist wants t o see education do wl he does not believe it can o should have an el r unlimited priority or a blank cheque relative to everything else (and t him this is what the educational administrator seems to be asking o fr. o) The economist i preoccupied with two central problems:f r t how s is, best to divide the limited economic pie among various competing uses t get the best over-allresults (the allocationproblem): second, o how best to use these resources,once they are allocated,to get maxim u m output (the efficiencyproblem). Viewed i t i perspective,it is obvious that education can only get n hs more a the expense of something else; this is the only sensible meant ing of a priority. But even a priority must have its l m t ;no single iis sector, educationincluded, be permitted to take al the pie it w s e , can l ihs irrespectiveofthe sacrificecoststo otherthings.Thus,t theeconomist, o the most c i i a problem for policy-makingis how to strike the right rtcl balance among competing uses for the same limited resources. This problem of course can be solved, and often is, by straight p l t c l jousting and trading,with those having the strongestp l t c l oiia oiia muscles coming off best. But the distribution of political muscles does not necessarily coincide with the best distribution of resources i the n over-allnational interest.The same applies to allocation of resources within the educational system,where the top administrator himself must be the arbiter. Thus,the economist,who identifies with the largernational interest or with the larger interests of the educational system as ;L whole, is constantlylooking for a more rational solution to this allocation problem. H does not expect such a solution to displace the p l t c l e oiia process, but he hopes it wl help the political process to yield someil what more rational answers. The best theoretical solution to the allocationproblem which the economists have come up with so far is t use the Gross National o Product as the central criterion and then apply a cost-benefite t to ts each of various alternativeallocation possibilities to discover which of them yieldsthe highest ratio of benefits t costs and hence wl contribo il ute most to over-alleconomic output. There are,of course,two admitted weaknesses i this cost-benefit n approach, notwithstanding its persuasive logic. One is the practical d f i u t of measuring costs and benefits, particularly benefits that ifcly wl onlybe realized i thedistantfuture.(Bywhich t m theeconomists il n ie
36
Recent progress in theory and methodology
e r i r estimatesmay be very wide ofthe mark and the policy decisions ale based on them irreversible.) The other weakness concernsthe criterion i s l and the narrow definition of benefits tef which it implies.Certainly economic output and growth are central to the attaiment of other major social goals,including the f l e development and equalization ulr of educational opportunities. But there may also be other kinds of benefit, particularly i the case of education,which are not directly n economic terms, but which are neverthelessvery important t indivio duals and the nation. If this is the case,then the economists costbenefit calculation, thoughgood as far as it goes,is too narrow-visioned and could seriously mislead policy-makersinto making the wrong allocations. The dangers and penalties of such errors, of course,are much reduced when the cost-benefitapproach is applied to a particular project rather than to a whole broad sector. As forthe efficiencyproblem,to get very farinto this would quickly involve economistsi some very sticky and contentious pedagogical n issues which most of them have been anxious t avoid. This i one o s reason why educational planning as it evolved i the 1 5 s and 1 6 s n 90 90 kept its focuson the broad outer parametersof the educational system and studiously ignored what was going on inside. Having i mind these contrasting ways in which educators and econ nomists tend t v e the same scene,we can perhaps appreciate better o iw the three different approachesto educational planning that were advocated by competing schools ofthought i the 1960s.In thejargon n of the trade they are called the socialdemand approach,the manpower approachand the cost-benefit approach(more accurately,the rate-of-return approach). L t us take a look a them. e t
2.The social demand approach

This approach comes most naturally to the educator and is actually more a description of what he normally does than a theoretical formulation of how he should approach planning. Socialdemandis an ambiguousand mischievous t r (rarely used em by educators) which can be defined in several quite different ways. It is most commonly used to mean the aggregate popular demand for education,that is, the sum total of individual demands for education a a given place and t m under prevailing cultural,political and ecot ie
37
nomic circumstances. If there are fewer classrooms and places than there are serious candidates to occupy them, one can say that social demand exceeds supply. There is good evidence of a demand-supply gap when educational authorities and political leaders receive mounting complaints from i a e parents whose children cannot get into rt school. T w o important points need t be added. One concerns the imposo ition by government of compulsory school attendance.When t i haphs pens the demand suddenly grows larger and is basically determined by demography;it is no longer a private,voluntary demand.The second point is that voluntary demand may be considerably influenced by what the costs of education are t the student and h s parents, not o i only the cash costs (fees, e c ) but the opportunitycosts of income t. forgone, of work not done on the family farm while the student is attending school. Within lmt,public authorities can influence the s z of social iis ie demand,though as a practical matter it is far easier t stimulate an o increase than to reverse the process. For example, if a government can afford to, it can arbitrarily boost social demand by requiring school attendance and,beyond the age ofcompulsion, making eduby cation free (even, i the extreme, by compensating students or their n parents for the income and work forgone). Short of these measures, governments can use propaganda t stimulate the private (voluntary) o demand for education. But the culture itself, the climate of attitudes and convictions about what education can do for people, is undoubtedly the most influential factor of al i determining the social demand l n for education,provided people can pay for i. t Measuring social demand is almost always extremely d f i u t and ifcl often impossible.The exception,of course,is where compulsory education e i t together with good demographic data on the relevant age xss group (the case i most industrialized countries but not i most develn n oping n t o s . To obtain even a good approximate measure of volain) untary demand would virtually require a house-to-house canvass i n most cases. The Unesco regional targets referred t earlier are a f i l good o ary illustration of the social demand approach.The method employed was essentially very simple,though it was no easy matter t get the basic o facts and estimates for applying it. The first step was t collect the o best available estimates of how many children by age levels there were i each country of the region and how many of them were already n
38
Rccent progress in theory and methodology
enrolled i primary,secondary and higher education. This established n the current participation rates. The next step was t take the best o availableprojections of the future youth population a each age level, t up to 1980.The third step was t choosesome participationrate targets o for 1980 and certain interveningyears and apply them to the population projections,to determine absolute enrolment targets. This l s was the trickiest step of a l because logically it required at l, a compositejudgement of many f a i i i y factors:how much educaesblt tion the people would really want,what it would cost,what the economy could afford, how much educated manpower each national economy would need and how many jobs it could actually provide, how much foreign aid could be obtained,etc. In actuality some relati e y simple assumptionswere made i the absenceof any better ones. vl n One importantassumption was that the populardemand for education would continue t outrun the supply.Another was that the unit costs o of education would remain f i l constant.I was taken for granted ary t that the economy could use al who got an education and that i l n general the greatly expanded educationaloutlayswould addimportantly t economic growth. The main f a i i i y measurement that was o esblt attempted concerned the availabilityoffunds.Here some rather optimi t c assumptions were made about the behaviour of unit costs,econsi omic growth rates and foreign aid. The resulting targets w r subject ee to criticism on many grounds.Nevertheless,they w r about as good ee as circumstances permitted and they undoubtedly were quite effective at the t m i stimulating higher educational budgets (and,indirectly, ie n i stimulating social demand as wl) n el. Another example of the social demand approach is what happens in France with regard to university admission.The rule i France is n that any student who passes the baccalauriat a the end of the lycek t (secondary school) can automatically enter the university. The skyrocketing of French university enrolments since the early 1950s has provided clear evidence of a sharply rising social demand for higher education.(It has also been a major source of headaches f r French o educational planners and university administrators,who had no good way t predict very closely how f s the social demand would rise o at and how many students would turn up each autumn.Usually more turned up than w r expected and than there was room for.This was ee certainly one importantcausalfactor i the EventsofMaythat shook n French universities t their foundations i 1968). o n Three main criticisms are made of the social demand approach,
39
particularly by economists: () it ignores the larger national problem 1 ofresourceallocation and implicitlyassumes that no matter how many resources go t education this is their best use for national development o as a whole;() it ignoresthe character and pattern ofmanpower needed 2 by the economy and can readily result i producing too many of some n types and not enough of others; and () it tends t over-stimulate 3 o popular demand,to underestimate costs,and to lead t a thin spreado ing of resources over too many students,thereby reducing quality and effectiveness to the point where education becomes a dubious investment.
3. The manpower approach

As noted earlier,many economists preferred the manpowerapproach
t educational planning. The argument i its favour ran roughly as o n follows: Economic growth is the mainspring of a nations over-all development and thus should be the prime considerationi allocating n its scarce resources. Economic growth, however, requires not only physical resources and f c l t e but also human resources t organize aiiis o and use them. Thus the development of human resources through the educational system is an important pre-requisitefor economic growth and a good investment of scarce resources,provided the pattern and quality of educational output is geared to the economys manpower needs. The advocates readily conceded that education had other important purposes besides producing manpower, but they saw no necessary conflict. They disposed of the issue by inviting educational planners t weigh these other o objectives along with manpower considerations, but this was vague guidance and poor comfort. Accepting this l n of reasoning,the government of Tanzania,for ie example,courageously decided i the early 1960s to stabilize its pri-, n mary school participation rate a about 50 per cent i order t give t n o temporary priority t higher levels of education directly tied t ecoo o nomic manpower needs. While the broad logic of the manpower approach was hard t argue o with,its practical application revealed a number of flaws.F r t it gave is, the educational planners only limited guidance. It had nothing t say o about primary education (which was not considered t be work-cono nected) though by implication it suggested curbing the expansion of primary education until the nation got richer. Most manpower studies
40
Recent progress in theory and methodology
confinedtheirattention t highlevelmanpowerneeded by the modern o sector(that is, mostly urban employment). Thus planners were given no useful clues about the educational requirements of the people who would constitute the vast majority of the nations future labour force, namely,semi-skilledand unskilled workers i the c t e and the vast n iis majority of workers who lived i rural areas. n Second,the employment classifications and manpower ratios ( . . eg the desirable ratio of engineers to technicians,doctors to nurses) used i most manpower studies i developing countries, as wl as the n n el assumed educational qualifications correspondingt each category of o job,were usually borrowed from industrializedeconomies and did not fit the r a i i s of l s developed ones. The actual work of a building elte es trades worker or agricultural specialist or health o f c r in Africa or fie Asia, for example, was likely to be quite different,and t c l for a o al different s r of preparation,from that of someonewearing the same ot label in England,France or the United States.Educational plans based on such faulty assumptions could result in the mis-preparationand o over-preparation many studentsforthejobsthey were meant t fill. of A third difficulty was the impossibility of making reliable forecasts of manpower requirements far enough ahead t be of real value t o o educational planning,because of the myriad economic,technological and other uncertainties involved.The more refined the categories( . . eg electricalengineersratherthan engineersofal types)and thelongerl range the forecast(e.g.f v t ten years U. one or two years) the fuzzier ie o the estimates became and the l s trustworthy. es The manpower approach could usefully c l attention t extreme al o gaps and imbalancesi educationsoutput pattern thatneeded remedy, n but t i hardly required elaborate s a i t c l studies.I could also give hs ttsia t educators useful guidance on how,roughly,the educational qualifications ofthe labourforceoughtt evolvei thefuture-what therelative o n proportions should be of people wt a primary education or less, ih secondary education,and various amountsofpost-secondarytraining. This i fact was verv useful for educational planners to know. but it n was a far cry from detailed manpower requirements. A e t educationalplanners who understood the foregoinglimitations lr soon learned to take impressives a i t c ltables oflong-termestimates ttsia of manpower requirements,broken into fine categories,with a large f s f l of s l . But, at the same t m ,they learned t extract useful itu at ie o guidance from manpower studies,even though this guidance fl far el short of what the planners needed.
4 1
W h a t i educational planning? s
The inadequacies of t i earlier manpower approach assumed gihs gantic proportions when eventually the employmentmarket pendulum began swinging hard from manpower d f c t to manpower surpluses, eiis as described earlier.This prompted such original pioneers of the manpower approachas ProfessorFrederick Harbison t counsel their overo enthusiastic disciples (by now engaged i what Harbison called statn i t c l pyrotechnics)t abandon this much too narrow v e i favour sia o iw n of a wider-angledemploymentapproach. This meant that economic planning and economic development policy,no less than educational strategy,w r i need of reconsideraee n tion.Until then (the l t 1 6 s the cardinal objective and criterion o ae 90) f success of economic planning had been t raise the GNP as fast as o possible,but this was beginning t look as over-simplifiedas educao tions goal of boosting enrolment s a i t c .What good was a rising ttsis GNP i it was accompanied by growing masses of unemployed and f under-employedand if its distribution amongthe citizenswas extremely lopsided ? So the manpower planners began pressing the v e that creating iw new jobs and high employment should be given parity with raising the GNP as a prime objective of economic policy. Some also speculated that a moderate excess of educational output over estimated manpower requirements might actually stimulate the economy to faster growth.Ifgood potential workers were available,perhaps the economy would use more of them,and perhaps some would take the initiative t create their own jobs i their education had struck a spark of motivao f tion and entrepreneurship.In short, the old assumption was called into question,that the economy independently created the manpower needs while education passively responded t them.Perhapsthe econo omy should also respond t education,and education could do some o job-creatingon its own. But there was one great if about al t i . Education could only l hs s t s y the economys manpower needs and stimulate the creation of aif more jobs i it was the right kind of education,i it produced develf f opment-minded people with the appropriate knowledge, s i l and kls attitudes t promote national development. A good deal of the eduo cation going on did not appear t fit these specifications. o
42
Recent progress iii theory and methodology
4.The rate-of-return approach

Yt anothergroup of economists,coming out of the neo-classical e tradition of economists,took hard issue with the manpower approach on grounds additional t those already mentioned. They said,i effect, o n that this approach was about as guilty as the social demand approach ofignoringthe over-allallocationproblemand the key test ofbenefits versus costs. The cost-benefit principle is what a rational individual roughly applies when deciding how best t spend his money when h s desires o i exceed his means. H examines his alternatives, weighs the cost of e each and the correspondingsatisfaction or u i i y he f e s it wl bring tlt el il him, and then chooses those particular options within h s means that i promise the highest ratio of benefits to costs. These economists argued that economic and educational planners should follow this same s y e of logic when dealing with the allocatl tion of a nations total resources among different major sectors,or with the allocation of the education systemstotalresourcesamong its various sub-sectors.N o one, l a t of al other economists,disagreed es l with t i general point. Indeed,one can hardly be a good planner or hs decision-makeri he does not think intuitively i these cost-benefit f n terms. But the practical d f i u t e of actually measuring these costs and ifclis benefits were even more formidable than those encountered by the socialdemand and manpower techniques.T o be sure,some economists and engineers had made progress on similar calculationsapplying t o such things as steel mls irrigation dams and f r i i e plants. But il, etlzr measuring the l k l costs and benefits of major sub-divisionsof an iey educational system was far more complicated.Undaunted,thc advocates of what came t be called the rate-of-return o approach made a heroic effort and emerged with some precise-lookingnumbers i sevn eral studies i different countries. n Other economists,however,lost no t m i f r n criticisms a these ie n i i g t numbers with the vigour and delight that economistsreserve for intratribal feuds. Educators largely stayed out of this particular battle. If they were even aware that it was being waged (which many w r not), ee they either failed to understand what the shooting was about or regarded the matter as so academic as t be innocuous.Their instinct o was right,a least a this early experimental stage of rate-of-return t t studies. The noise from the economists was out of al proportion to l
43
W h a t is educational planning?
the immediaterelevance of these studiest policy decisions. S i l there o tl, was always the r s that some innocent top decision-makermight get ik hold ofthe rate-of-return figures,take them t be s i n i i a l revealed o cetfcly truth and make some horribly mistaken decisions. This a least was t the fear of c i i s but i fairness it should be said that the authors of rtc, n these studies would probably themselves have been alarmed i they f had thought that unsophisticated use would be made of their very tenuous s a i t c l conclusions. ttsia It would take too long here t explain in detail the numerousweako nesses which have been charged t the rate-of-returnapproach. For o one thing,the basic cost data are flimsy and c i i stake particular issue rtc with including as a cost the estimated income forgone by students, especially i countries where heavy unemployment i endemic. These n s weaknesses on the cost side,however,are susceptibleof correction as better data become available. The more serious weaknesses,which can be somewhatlessenedwith improved data but never eliminated,concern the calculation of future benefits.The usual method is t calculate the differential in a persons o life-timeearningsthatwl resultfrom an added incrementofeducation, il o discounted by an arbitrary percentage t allow for the non-educational causes of t i extra income ( . . superior intelligence, motivation, hs eg family background and connections). But these future income differentials,correlatedwt educational differentials,are computed on the ih basis of past and present differentials,the implicit assumption being that they wl remain constant i the future. This i a very dubious il n s assumption. These extra private earnings (after taxes) resulting from extra education are used as the measure of private benefits. The same private earnings (before taxes) are also used as a proxy measure of social benefits,which some c i i s consider t be a rather big leap. One of rtc o the underlying (and doubtful) assumptions behind this method of calculating social benefits is that differentials in wage and salary rates are a f i l accurate reflection of the relative economic productivity ary ofdifferentpeople.A good many other heroic assumptionsare required to complete the arithmetic and to reach a rate-of-return figure. The authors make clear that their method measures only the direct economic benefits and takes no account of indirect economic benefits and non-economic ones. This is a fair-sized exclusion. The educational planner is l f wondering what extra allowance he should make et for these excluded benefits.
4 4
Recerit progress in theory and mcthodology
Curiously enough, though primary education is not i itself conn sidered a preparation for work, a few of these rate-of-return studies, done independently i different developing countries,have reached the n same conclusion-that the economic yield on primary education i n those countries is considerablyhigher than the yield on university education. This should not be taken as a natural law,however,or even necessarily as the gospel truth i these particular countries;it may n simply reflect certain biases i the data and methodology. But it does n illustrate the sort of provocative hypotheses that such studiesthrust up which can lead t further useful inquiry. o Ifal the other weaknesses could somehow be overcome, therewould l still remain the fact that the rate-of-return approach tells the planners and decision-makersonly half what they need t know. It tells them o i what direction to put more resources t get the best yield,but it n o does not tell them how far t go i t i direction.The second question o n hs is perhaps their biggest problem. T o sum up, it is f i to say that the rate-of-return ar approach a its t present experimental stage of development tells us much more about the past than it does about the future. And while w can usefully e learn from history,the l s thing a developing nation wants t do is at o t repeat i.Given the paucity of good data to work with and the need, o t i any event,t make a whole constellation of tenuous assumptions n o about the economic future, the precise-looking figures arrived a t should be treated with extreme caution by practical planners and policy-makers. None the less, the rate-of-returnapproach,l k the social demand ie and manpower approaches,has a decided relevance and u i i y foredutlt cational planning. A the very least it emphasizes the constant need to t examine alternatives and t weigh their respective costs and benefits o as best one can before leaping t a decision. A its methodologies o s and basic data improve it may provide more solid guidance. But none of these approaches,it is now clear,provides an adequate basis by itselffor educationalplanning. By now even the most partisan proponents of these different approaches concede that a new synthesis of al three is needed. Even such a synthesis,however, would leave l important gaps t be f l e . The towering weakness of al three is that o ild l they implicitly take the existing educational system for granted and leave it untouched except for its scale.They are essentially instruments for macro-planning, as such can be very useful. But the conclusion and
4s
we wl come to later is that educational planning now needs to get il down inside the system and change it to make it more relevant and efficient and productive. This is the main way to raise the future rate of return on educational investments.
46
Purl Five
Recent progress i n putting theory into practice
In addition to the broader concepts and methodologiesjust discussed, ee numerous specific techniques useful to educational planning w r developedand improvedduring the 1960s.Theseincluded, example: for better s a i t c lmethods for making various types of projections (e.g. ttsia of enrolments,requirements for classroom f c l t e ,teachers,equipaiiis ment and materials); more reliable means for estimating future costs and financialrequirements;ways oftranslatingdemographicand manpower data into future enrolment patterns. In short, steady progress was made on enlarging the tool-kitfor planning. But three other basic steps w r required before these better ee tools could be used effectively.They were:(1) research and diagnosis to illuminate the key problems confronting educational planning; ( ) the training of people who could apply these research results and 2 planning methodologies in real situations, and ( ) the creation and 3 o adaptation of organizational and administrative arrangements t enable planning t function. o It is satisfying for anyone who believes in the importance of multilateral agencies to observe that it was these agencies,Unesco in particular,but also the OECD i the case of Western Europe,that provided n the prime leadership i helping the whole world t make substantial n o progress on the above three fronts during the 1960s. It may be of interest to sketch briefly what they did.
1. Training and research

The previously-mentioned Unesco regional conferences early in the 1960s inspired a large volume of requests from developing nations for
47
technical assistance in educational planning. Despite the extreme world-wideshortage of such expert personnel,Unesco responded vigorously by sending out during the 1960s a total ofmore than 150 shortt r missions and over 140 longer-termresident advisory experts on em educational planning,coveriiig 80 countries. This, however, could be only a provisional solution. There was evident need t train a cadre of more highly qualified educationalplano ning experts for international service. Even more important was the need to help each country t acquire its own indigenous planning o experts in order t become self-sufficientas soon as possible. o To meet these needs, Unesco set about creating a network of new training and research f c l t e .Between 1960 and 1963,in co-operation aiiis with the developing nations themselves,Unesco established regional training centres for Latin America ( n Santiago de C i e , for Asia i hl) ( n New Delhi), for the Arab States( n B i u ) and for the new African i i ert, nations ( n Dakar). To provide a nexus for these regional centres and i for universities and other organizationsthat might be attracted to t i hs f e d of training,and to give an impetus t research,Unesco (with the il o co-operationof the World Bank,the Ford Foundation and the French Government) established in Paris i 1963 the International Institute n for EducationalPlanning.Subsequentlythe Institutereceived generous support also from individual governments and non-governmental organizations. These new training organizationsw r forced t improvise a first, ee o t for there was very little literature and no organized body of knowledge on educational planning.The subject was just being evolved and part of their job was t help i the process. By forming interdisciplinary o n staffsand achieving a f i measure of continuity,and by linking themar selves closely to the countries where pertinent experience was being generated,the regional centres and the I E gradually became storage IP and retrieval centres for new knowledge as it emerged from fresh research and experience. The I E i particular sought t collect,create and disseminate t i IP n o hs new knowledge through a wide-ranging publications programme which included research reports and instructional materials aimed at bridging the communications gap between researchers and practitioners and a remedying the world-wideshortage of good training matt e i l . By 1969,s x years after the Institutescreation,a large number ras i of such publications,translated into various languages,w r i wide ee n circulation and use throughout the world.
48
Recent progress in putting theory into practice
By then, moreover, several hundred persons had received formal training a the I E and the Unesco regional centres,ranging from a t lP f w weeks to a f l year. The great majority w r o f c a s of devele ul e e fiil oping countries who returned home t apply what they had learned. o The IIEPstrainees,a a more advanced level, also included a good t number of international expert advisers who went out t serve develo oping nations,and a growing number ofpeople who went on t become o teachers and research workers in educational planning i regional n centres,universities and national training institutions. The IIEP also became a meeting-groundand exchange centre for the officials,scholars and students of numerous universities and other organizations that were building research and training programmes in t i f e d h s il. Unesco was the main catalytic agent for t i movement,especially hs with respect t the developing regions,but the OECD also played a o notable role i the developed world.The OECDs n direct training activities w r limited, but it marshalled intellectual talents i Western ee n Europe,North America and Japan t do creative work on the more o theoreticaland methodological frontiersof educational planning,and it stimulated interest in planning i the education ministries of its n member states. Beyond this, i the l t 1 6 s OECDsDevelopment n ae 9 0 Assistance Committee was instrumental i prodding donor nations n into giving greater attention and support t educational planning and o development i their programmes of assistance t developing nations. n o Then i 1968 the OECD created a Centre for Educational Research n and Innovation with a mandate t help its member states to bring o about overdue educational reforms and innovations. By 1970 it could truly be said that,thanks to the major initiatives taken by multilateral agencies and to the abundant co-operationof university scholars and many others, an international community of educational planning had come into being. An impressive new body of knowledge had been created and disseminated,a substantial i i i l nta cadre of planners had been trained and dispersed throughoutthe world, and effective co-operationand communicationbetween producers and consumers of research i t i new area had been achieved. Though n hs there was still a long way to go, a sizeable s a t had been made. I tr t would be d f i u t t match t i record of rapid progress i many other ifcl o hs n f e d of scholarships and practice. ils
49
2. Implementing planning
Several tough questions immediately confronted the new training and research programmes: What is an educational planner ? What does he do, where does he fit in, what is his role in an educational establishment? What are his responsibilitieswith regard to policy and decisionmaking ? What special qualities and skills does an educational planner need? H o w exactly can a training and research programme help him to acquire these? The practical-minded participants in these training programmes never forgot that they would eventually be returning to their ministries or other home organizations and would be expected to bring something useful with them.They quickly saw the value and pertinence of the new methodologies to which they were exposed and they rapidly acquired critical insights into their own educational systems through comparing them with others and discovering many of the same basic problems and defects. But a l this provoked them into asking theml selves and others a persistent set of questions. What can we do with what we have learned when we get home? H o w can we apply these concepts,methodologies and new information il to our situation so that they wl make a real difference,a real improveil ment in it? What changes wl be needed in our organizational and administrative set-up in order for planning to take hold? What can just one individual do to move this mountain of inertia which stands in the way of doing things differently and better ?H o w can we convince the top people that such changes are imperative, that planning simply wont work otherwise? Most of all, what can be done to change the attitudes and perceptions of a l concerned,to make them see that they l all-up and down the line, from classroom teacher to Prime Minister -must be planning minded, that they must be the real planners? This last question, though loaded with anxiety, was gratifying to the training staff,for it showed that their efforts had not been for naught. This was the key problem-how to make planning part of the life-style of everyone in the educational system.Educational planning, regardless of how good its methodologies may be, can never really work w l unless the administrative milieu is favourable. This is less el a matter of how the boxes are arranged on the organizational chart or of how the job descriptions read, as it is of how the various participants on the scene think about planning and how they perceive their own particular role in relation to the planning process.
SO
Recent progress in putting theory into practice
The plain fact-and the first thing for everyone t be clear abouto is that the administrative set-upsand environments which most educational systems have carried over from the past w r never designed ee t play host t a modern brand of planning. Most were designed for o o rule-making and caretaking in educational systems where the central government and public authorities played only a modest role. The main initiative and responsibility for creating and running educational institutions, for financing, expanding or changing them, were left largely i private or local government hands. In such situations the n central educational administration was usually characterized by a clear division of labour. The principal officer, s a f and inspectorate tf responsible for supervising any particular level or type of education -such as primary or secondary or technicaleducation-lived i splenn did isolation from the others. Each group had its own organization box,its own budget,ground rules,doctrine and style of administration. It was as ifthe education department or ministry was a loose federation of rival f e s kept in check by an unwritten non-aggressionpact and if, by an arbiter a the top. t This tended t be the case even where the central government played o a major role i financing, n staffing operatingthe educationalsystem. and The organizational compartments were mutually exclusive and their communications ran mostly straight up and down, t the man a the o t top and t the clients below;rarely was there horizontal communicao tion with those concerned with other parts of the system. It is not surprisingthat i these circumstancesno one really saw the n educational system as a system,or t i d t plan it as a whole. There re o was in fact no great need t a the t m , the reasons w saw earlier. o t i e for e The point t be emphasized here, however,is that the habit patterns, o rules and regulations, doctrines and philosophies,and not least of al the bureaucratic attitudes,prerogatives and self-perceptionsthat l grew out of t i setting became serious obstacles when the need arose hs for a more comprehensive kind of planning. These obstacles,which still e i t i most countries,cannot be overxs n come merely by tacking a new planning unit on t the old administrao tive structure. Such a unit can quickly find itself effectively frozen out of the main arena of decisive action.Those i that arena wl either n il be too busy to co-operatewith the new planning unit and to use it effectively t help them with their work,or they wl wilfully resent or o il ignore i. t None of t i is said i criticism of the individuals involved,most of hs n
51
whom have risen heroically t the new challenges,worked exceedingly o hard under trying conditions,and accomplished amazing amounts.The heart of the problem is that they are the products and prisoners of an outmoded,regulation-oriented administrative system which by its very nature inhibits good planning and e f c e t action. There is no simple fiin cure for these ailments.Not until the grip of its inertia is broken by necessary changes of attitude,structure and procedure,and not until a new planning-mindednesspermeates the whole system,can planning really function wl and educational development move smoothly forel ward. This is simply t say that educational planning is not the exclusive o job of the full-timetechnical planners who occupy the central educational planning unit. Their role is a very important one. They must piece together the over-allpicture with scrapsof information and ideas drawn from many sources. Seeing the system i broad perspective, n they can identify major trends, relationships, constraints, options, needs and opportunities and bring these to the attention of others for discussion and action. But they cannot even put the picture together, much less interpret it wisely, without the willing and continuous involvement of al their colleagues i other boxes. Planning c l s for l n al a wide and e f c e tcommunicationsnetwork that runs i aldirections. fiin nl In the l s analysis,an educational system wl be wl planned and at il el its plans wl implemented only i those responsible for its various parts el f are themselves good planners,and only if each concedes that h s subi plans must be mediated and meshed with al others into a consistent l and unified whole that wl serve the best interests of the total system. il In more and more countries,happily, t i new climate is gradually hs being achieved, and educational planning is becoming increasingly effective, but in some it is still little more than a pious wish and a costly source of frustration. Those who have had an opportunity t compare educational plano ning efforts over a wide cross-sectionof nations would probably al l agree that planning works best where ( ) top political and educational a leaders genuinely believe i its necessity,give it their strong support, n and make serious use of it i their decision-making, ( ) al others n and b l with a serious stake i the educational system-lower-level adminisn trators,teachers, students,parents and employers-have been given a f i chance for their voices t be heard i the process of formulating ar o n plans for the future.
52
Part Six
A look into the future
W e have tried i this booklet to achieve a better understanding of n educational planning by examining its functions and observing how it has taken many different shapes and formst fit many different needs. o In particular w have examined that extraordinary s i e of turbulent e lc history since the Second World War which has created an imperative need throughout the world for drastically new approaches to educational planning. In this final section we turn to the future and ask where educational planning should go from here. Despite the considerable progress made,the educational challenges of the post-warera and the formidable problems t which they have o given rise are still a very long way from being met. Indeed,after more than a decade of unparalleledexpansion,educational systemsvirtually everywhere confront the future in a state of c i i . They are beset by rss a mountainous backlog of unfinished business and besieged by staggering problems that threaten to grow worse. How can educational planning help them? H o w must it be strengthened t do this? What o further new dimensions must it acquire? Five particular needs for improvement stand out within the framework of educational planning as it has been conceived in recent years. F r t the three approachesdiscussed earlier (socialdemand,manpower is, and rate-of-return) must now be synthesized into a more coherent, unified approach. Second,the numerous methodologies required to apply t i more unified approach must be furtherrefined and strengthhs ened.Third,a gigantic effort must be made by al educational systems l to improvethe information f o s needed for effective planning. Fourth, lw a larger cadre of people with broad technical competence in planning m s be trained, a general appreciationofplanning must be i s i l d ut and ntle
53
What is educational planning'!
i many others whose participation in the planning process is essential. n Fifth, organizational and administrative arrangements,attitudes and behaviour patterns must be drastically altered to accomodate effective planning. The above needs are so obvious and already so widely recognized that they wl undoubtedly receive major attention i coming years. il n l But what is perhaps not so obvious is that al of these things,though essential, wl not be nearly enough,because the three approaches t il o educational planning considered earlier ignore one important factor. They have usefully brought the larger outlines and relationships of the educational system into sharper focus,but they have taken much too little account of the inner life of the system and its need for drastic change. I educational systems are to serve their students and society w l , f el they must now make these changes i their inner life with dispatch: n changes i their specific objectives and priorities, i their internal n n structure,content and methods, i the training and use of teachers, n i the processes of teaching and learning,i the s y e and methods of n n tl governance and management. Moreover, some of the most pressing educational needs, involving people outside the formal educational structure,must now be facedupto more seriouslyand creative solutions found.The whole idea of lifelong education needs to be transformed from inspired rhetoric to an orderly reality.But t i can only happen hs as the traditional institutional and psychological barriers between inschool and out-of-schoollearning are removed and the two sets of a t v t e become jointly planned and better integrated. ciiis To ignore these imperatives is to court disaster. I traditional eduf cational systemscontinue t pursue the simplistic expansionist strategy o of making themselves larger i their old image,they wl compound n il the already serious maladjustments between themselves and their society,they wl waste resources,exacerbate the crisis that already il grips them, f i i their mission,jeopardize their own survival and al n impose untold penalties on future generations. I t i diagnosis is correct,then it followsthat educationalplanning, f hs without abandoning its macro-view, must now turn its attention more seriously to the internal a f i s of education. The aim must be t far o improve the performance of educational systems through changes that wl make them more relevant to the needs of their clientdes,more il e f c e t i their use of available resources, and a more effective force fiin n for individual and social development. Improved performance does
54
A look into the futurc
not mean simply doing better what is already being done; it means doing things differently and doing different things.Therefore the dominant emphasis of the strategy now called for must not be upon expansion per se-though certainly more expansion wl be needed-but il upon change and adaptation. What sort of educational planning is required t serve this new o strategy? Certainly it wl have t include good macro-planning that il o focuses on the broad dimensions of the system and its relationships with the economy and society. But beyond this there must be new forms of micro-planningthat apply t the inner processes of the system o and t its numerous sub-systems. seems a f i guess,therefore,that o It ar the new frontiersfor educational planning i coming years wl include n il itd the five main territories l s e below.
1. Refinement of objectives
Without clearly stated objectives and priorities there is no adequate basis either for evaluating an educational systemsperformance or for planning its future intelligently.If the de facto aims of an educational system (as distinct from its stated aims) are inconsistent with its societysprincipal goals,maladjustments are bound t develop between o il the system and society,and societysneeds wl suffer.Likewise,if the specific objectives ofvarious educational sub-systemsare incompatible with the whole systemsbroader aims,then the system wl be a war il t with i s l and its basic aims wl be defeated. The chief losers i this tef il n il l event wl be its students. For al these reasons,the essential first step toward improving an educational systemsrelevance and performance is t re-examineand clarify its basic aims and priorities and the more o specific objectives of each of its sub-systems, ensure that they are to compatible with one another and with the societys major goals, priorities,and needs. Some may throw up their hands and say that t i cannot be done, hs that it has been t i d many t m s and failed,that a best it ends i re ie t n murky rhetoric which everyone can accept,or,worse still,i irreconciln able conflict between divergent interests. But t i is tantamount t hs o conceding that the very institution which is supposed to foster i t l i neltef gent behaviour i others is incapable of acting intelligently i s l ,that n an educational system has no choice but to run on the basis of folklore, blind faith and stultifying compromise.
55
W h a t is educational planning?
This seems a dubious conclusion. In al events, the situation calls l for a further attempt,t i tm relying less on prevailing doctrines and h s ie prejudices t supply the goals and priorities,and much more on guido ance provided by rational analysis.Certainly,it wl always be d f i u t il ifcl to define the broad aims of any educational system as a whole i anyn thing but quite general terms that inevitably lend themselves t difo ferent interpretations.Even so,it should be possible for social scientists t check i various ways on the actual behaviour of the system and o n on the competencies and behaviour of the people it produces, to determine whether these behaviours are reasonably consistent with the avowed aims of the system and the evident goals and needs of society. What is more important,as one moves from the general to the particular,from the broad aims of the educational system as a whole to the more specific objectives of its particular sub-systems, becomes it easier to define objectives i operationally meaningful terms and to n use these defined objectives as c i e i for testing performance.There rtra is a vast difference,for example,between the broad aim o producing f goodcitizensor liberallyeducated personsand such specific objectives as developing a definable level of competence i reading,or i n n using arithmetic, or i employing a foreign language. n In point of fact,experts i educational tests and measurements are n making significant progress i devising more flexible and diversified n means for evaluating various kinds of desired educational outcomes on the part of individual students.W h y then should it not be possible t adapt some of these instruments and to devise further ones for o testing the performance of the system iself-provided that there are some clear objectives against which t assess performance ? o
2. Evaluation of system performance

A clarification of educational objectives is essential not only to ensure that the system is striving t do the right and relevant things,but to o provide a basis for checking how wl it is actually doing them. It el also affords a basis for comparing alternative ways of pursuing any particular learning objective and for determining which of these is the most efficacious. This is half of what educational change is al about. The first half l involves changing what the system is doing,t make it more relevant o and up-to-date; second half involves changing how it is doing it, the
56
t make the process more e f c e tand effective.A n educational system o fiin can be doing the wrong things very efficiently,or it can be doing the right things very inefficiently.Both possibilities must be examined i n judging its performance. If educational systems are t make changes for the better and not o simply for the sake of change,they wl need a variety of diagnostic il tools with which t assess their performance, identify opportunities o for improvement,and monitor their progress over t m . ie
3. A systems approach t educational design o

Since educational systems wl have t change more frequently and il o more rapidly than i the past,they wl need new techniques for doing n il it. The usual way has been ad hoc, piecemeal and episodic and has typically involved superimposing something new on top of the old, without really changing the old,as for example,adding instructional television, languagelaboratory or a fl projector to the conventional a im classroom procedures.In e f c this changes the old teaching-learning fet systembut without consciously designing a new one,because it has not been looked a as a system. s a result,the f l potential of the t A ul new component is unlikely t be realized,its cost wl be a net addition o il t the old costs,and the improvement i the work of the class may o n prove disappointing. I is as i someone,given the job of putting a t f man on the moon, began w t the biplane and t i d t add things ih re o that would get it t the moon. o The alternative approach is t use the method of systemdesign, o which has been used very successfully in many other f e d (including ils actually getting some men t the moon). This works the other way o round. Instead of starting with an old system that is not performing satisfactorily and trying t patch it up, it begins with a clear set of o performancespecifications,that is, with a definition of the results desired (the objectives)and the various controlling constraints and environmentalfactors t be observed (such as the background of the o students,cost ceilings and t m l m t t o s . The next step is t devise ie i i a i n ) o a variety of alternative possible systemsthat might be employed to achieve the specified results. Each such potential system wl involve il a somewhat different combination of components (inputs) and a somewhat different technology. The estimated costs and the l k l iey results (outputs) wl also vary from system t system,and some wl il o il fit into the general context better than others. The problem then is
57
to compare the relative advantages and disadvantages of these alternative systems and t select the one which,al things considered,seems o l best suited to the purpose and the circumstances. In designing new teaching-learningsystems i t i manner t. n hs o accomplish various wl defined objectives, the chances are that the el optimum one wl usually include some combinationof old things and il il new, f t e together i a new way. The chances are also that it wl itd n pay t test out a variety of different systems doing the same job o for i a number of comparable situations so that a good supply of solid n evidence wl be generated with which t compare their respective il o costs and results.I wl clearly pay neighbouring educational systems t il to co-operate i a broad research and development programme so n that they can experiment collectively i ways that none could afford n alone. The basic principles to be followed i educational systems design n are clear enough, but the practical techniques still require development and testing out. Once these are available,they can become an effective part of a built-in,continuous process of educational selfrenewal.
4.New management styles and measures

The various measures already mentioned constitute important devices for the better management of educational systems. (Included i t i n hs concept of management are the planners, evaluators and decisionmakers not only i thefronto f c oftheministry but i every classroom n fie n as w l . But additional tools wl also be needed,many of which are el) il already within reach and simply require further refinement and testing. Among these are the methodologies used for operations research i n other fields which, properly adapted, might be profitably applied t o o education:programme budgeting geared t specified accomplishment targets;the PERTsystem of schedulingcomplex projects and programm s; various methods of cost analysis and cost-efectiveness testing, e and related techniques of cost-benefitanalysis. The effective planning and management of a modern educational system requires also a minimum of c i i a indicators which regularly rtcl reveal t al concerned what is happening t major variables and o l o relationships within the system and t crucial relationships between o the system and its environment.
58
A look into tlic future
It is not enough t know,for example,the total number of students o enrolled at each major level;it is also important to know how they are distributed geographically and by grade levels and programme areas;what changes are taking place i the profile of socio-economic n background and of academic qualifications of the student body, together with key information about rates of promotion and attrition in different parts of the system. Similarly it i not enough to know the general trend and breakdown s of gross expenditures as revealed by the nationaleducation budget;it i importantt know also what is happening t unit costs throughout s o o o o the system,t the pattern of revenues by sources,t the relationship ofeducational expendituresto total public expenditures and the GNP. If teacher supplies,costs and utilization are to be more intelligently assessed and planned, there must be indicators that reveal trends in the distribution of the teaching s a f by age, qualifications, salary tf levels and years of service,changes i class s z i various parts of the n ie n system,and i teaching hours. n The output and effectiveness of the system must be monitored not only by indicators showing trends i the annual number of graduates n of different types,but by indicators which reveal what has happened t previous graduates (and non-graduates)-which is the ultimate o acid test of the educational systemscontribution. What constitutes the desirable minimum of indicators of this sort wl depend on what is necessary and feasible in each situation;the il more sophisticated the educational system, the more extensive its management information system can be.But eventhe simplestand least developed educational system-or individual school or universitywl find it very worth while to know much more about i s l than it il tef has ever known before. N o w that education has become the largest economic enterprise in most countries and a major influence on the whole economy and society,it can hardly afford to be managed i n the s y e of a modest family business. I must operate with its eyes tl t wide open.
5.Intensified research and development

Although educationalinstitutionshave been major s i n i i spawningcetfc grounds for great technologicalbreakthroughs i such other f e d as n ils medicine,industry and agriculture,they have devoted little of their
59
talents i the past t achieving comparable breakthroughs i the techn o n niques of education i s l .Traditional educational research,though it tef has occasionally yielded useful results,has been too undernourished and fragmented and often too unrelated to the really v t l problems ia facing educational systems t have had a very substantial over-all o impact.Moreover,most research oft i type has been too narrowly and hs exclusively pedagogical i its focus to embrace the interdisciplinary n problems that plague educational systems today. The only way that change and innovation can become a continuous process and a normal way of life for educational systemsisby mobilizing more of each systemsown creative brainpower for the purpose, involving a wide variety of disciplines,investing much more money i n educational research and development,and establishing the necessary institutional arrangements t undergird the process. Lacking this,and o lacking a pervasive s i i of s i n i i inquiry,educational systems wl prt cetfc il continue to p l new things on old l k geological layers,and to have ie ie i l f t i ginnovations forced upon them from the outside. l-itn To many people,including many wl acquainted w t educational el ih planning, the new frontiersjust sketched may appear a first sight t t o lie beyond the proper boundaries of educational planning.And they wl be quite right,of course, if one accept these boundaries as they il have been conceived ofi the past. But this isjustthe point;the boundn aries must be widened. To serve the present urgent need for educational systems to change and renew themselves i virtually every resn pect,the previous conception of educational planning must be broadened still further t include the planning of internal changes i these o n systems. To extend educational planning i this manner wl inevitably mean n il merging it more intimately with the processes of management,pedagogy, and research and development. This wl make planning less il distinguishable from other functions,less a thing apart,and considerably more interdisciplinaryi character.Instead of being regarded as n the special domain of a f w technical planning experts occupying a e back room near the Ministers office,educationalplanning wl become il the standard business of virtually every operatori the system,includn ing,not least of a l the teachers. l,
W e can end this booklet with a prediction. When someone asks, a

decade or two from now,Whatis educational planning?the answer
60
he gets wl be very different,and a good deal longer and more complex, il than the transitory answer given in these pages. But one thing wl be il the same. The man answering the question wl begin, as the present il author did,by observing that educational planning is too complex and diversified a thing,and is still changing too rapidly,to fit any simple definition or t be encased i any single general theory. And he wl o n il no doubt end by saying that, while educational planning can make valuable use of s i n i i methods and modes of thinking,it is none cetfc the l s - i e education itself-more of an a t than a science. eslk r
61
IIEP book list
The following books,published by Unesco/lIEP, obtainable from the Institute are or from Unesco and its national distributors throughout the world:
Educational deuelopinent i Africu (1969.Three volumes, containing eleven African n
research monographs)
Educationalplanning: a bibliography (1 964) Educationalplanning: a directory o training and research i s i u i n (1968) f ntttos Educationalplanning i the USSR (1968) n
fl t Fundamentals o educationalplanning ( u l list a front of this volume) f

Manpower aspects o educationalplanning (1968) f Methodologies o educationalplanning for developing countries f by J. D.Chesswas (1968)
fv ils Monographirs africaines ( i e t t e , in French only: list available on request)

New educationalmedia i action: case studiesfor planners (1967.Three volumes) n
The new media: memo t educational planners by W.Schramm, P.H. Coombs, o F.Kahnert, J. Lyle (1967. A report including analytical conclusions based on the above three volumes of case studies)
Problems and strategies o educationalplanning: lessons from Latin America (1 965) f Qnalitatiue aspects o educationalplanning (I 969) f Research for educationalplanning: notes on emergent needs by William J. Platt (1970)
The followingbooks,produced in but not published by the Institute,are obtainable through normal bookselling channels:
Quantitatiue methods o educationalplanning by HBctor Correa f Published by International Textbook Co.,Scranton, Pa.,1969 The world educationalc i i : a systems analysis by Philip H. Coombs rss
Published by Oxford University Press, New York,London and Toronto, 1968
The International Institute

for Educational Planning
The International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP) was established by o Unesco in 1963t serveas an internationalcentrefor advanced training and research in the f e d of educational planning. Its basic financing is provided by Unesco il and the Ford Foundation and its physical f c l t e by the Government of France. aiiis I also receives supplemental support from private and governmental sources. t o The Institute's aim is t expand knowledge and the supply of competent experts in educational planning in order to assist al nations to accelerate their educational l development. In this endeavour the Institute co-operatedwith interested training and research organizations throughout the world. The governing board of the Instituteis as follows:
Chairman
S r Sydney Caine (United Kingdom), former Dircctor,London i

School of Economics and Political Science Hellmut Becker (Federal Republic of Germany), President, German Federation of Adult Education Centres Alain Bienaym6 (France), Technical Adviser, Ministry of Education Roberto Campos ( r z l , former Minister of Economic Planning and Bai) Development Richard H. Demuth (United States of America), Director, Development Services Department,International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) Abdel-AzizEl-Koussy (United Arab Republic), Dircctor, Regional Centre for Educational Planning and Administration in the Arab Countries Joseph Ki-Zerbo(Upper Volta), President,National Commission of the Republic of Upper Volta for Unesco D. Kothari (India), Chairman,University Grants Commission S. P.S.N.Prasad (India), Director,Asian Institute for Economic Development and Planning Philippe de Seynes (France), Under-Secretary-General Economic for and Social Apdirs, United Nations S.A. Shumovsky (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics), Head, Methodological Administration Department, Ministry of Higher and Specialized Secondary Education (RSFSR) Fergus B. Wilson (United Kingdom), Chief, Agricultural Education Branch, Rural Institutionsand Services Division,Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
Menzbers
Inquiries about the Institute and requests for copies of its latest progress report should be adressed to: 75 The Director, IIEP,9 rue Eugene-Delacrok, Paris-16"

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Unesco :International Institute for Educational Planning

Fundamentals of educational planning-1

Included in the series:*

*Also published in French. Other titles to appear

JWhat is educational planning?

Unesco: International Institute for Educational Planning

Fundamentals of educational planning

Fundamentals of educational planning

A few personal words to the reader

The ancestry of educationalplanning

A few personal words to the reader

What is educational planning?

A few personal words to the reader

What i educational planning? s

The ancestry of educational planning

What is educational planning?

The ancestry of educational planning

W y a new kind of planning h

1. In the industrialized nations

W h y a new kind of planning became necessary

What is educational planning?

W h y a new kind of planning became necessary

What is educational planning?

W h y a n e w kind of planning became necessary

2.In the developing nations

What is educational planning?

W h y a new kind of planning became necessary

What is educational planning?

W h y a new kind of planning became necessary

What is educational planning?

f. The wrong kind of education

W h y a new kind of planning became necessary

What is educational planning?

Recent progress i theory and methodology n

What is educational planning?

1. The key planning questions

Recent progress i theory and methodology n

What is educational planning?

Recent progress in theory and methodology

2.The social demand approach

What is educational planning?

Rccent progress in theory and methodology

What is educational planning?

3. The manpower approach

Recent progress in theory and methodology

Recent progress iii theory and methodology

4.The rate-of-return approach

Recerit progress in theory and mcthodology

What is educational planning?

Recent progress i n putting theory into practice

1. Training and research

What i educational planning? s

Recent progress in putting theory into practice

What is educational planning?

Recent progress in putting theory into practice

What i educational planning? s

A look into the future

What is educational planning'!

A look into the futurc

2. Evaluation of system performance

A look into the future