-The choice between the levels of education:The first choice is between the levels of education.What emphasis should be made on primary, secondary, and higher education when making investments in education? You can give top priority to primary education, but only at the expense of secondary and higher education. Top priority can be given to secondary education, second priority to primary education, and third priority to higher education, but you cannot give top priority simultaneously to primary, secondary, and higher education. No strategy of educational planning is complete until this choice has been made.
-The choice between quality and numbers:The second and even more fundamental choice is that between quality and numbers. Which is to be emphasized? In the field of primary education,for instance, do you aim at compulsory universal schooling, with few text books, poor teaching methods, and teachers who will necessary have very low qualifications? Or do you want wellqualified teachers, better textbooks and better teaching methods? If you choose the second alternative, economics necessities may force you to achieve quality, that is, to sacrifice the ideal of primary education. There is a difference between schooling and education, and the choice between quality and numbers arises throughout the whole education system.
-Science and technology versus the liberal arts:The third choice, more particularly in the field of higher education, concerns the balance between science and technology, on one hand, and the liberal arts, on the other. What proportion of students should attend science and engineering faculties, and what proportion should study the arts, humanities and law? This is not a question of the intrinsic value of these subjects but rather one of the practical needs of the country.If you decide to increase the number of science and engineering students, you are immediately faced with a thorny financial and political problem. Education in science and engineering costs roughly four times more per student than education in the arts, humanities and law. Financial necessities may therefore compel you to balance any expansion in science and engineering studies by a fourfold contraction of liberal art studies. In fact, the choice between science and technology and the liberal arts becomes to some extent a choice between quality and numbers. By and large, the lowest quality education is in law, humanities and the arts, because they lend themselves the use of large classes and employment of part-time teachers. Science and engineering however require much higher standards of teaching, more expensive facilities and many more full-time teachers. In the non-communists world,about 25% of the students body is enrolled at science and engineering faculties, and in communist countries, the proportion varies between 40-50%. Of all the continents, Latin America has the lowest proportion of students in science and engineering- somewhere around 15%. The educational planner must keep such figures in mind when deciding on the proper balance between scientific and nonscientific education.
- FORMAL EDUCATION VERSUS NON-FORMAL TRAINING The fourth area of choice lies in the relative emphasis upon formal education, i.e. education before employment and training by employing institutions or on-the-job training. This problem becomes particularly acute at the craftsman level. It has been amply demonstrated that pre-employment training of craftsmen in secondary vocational schools is a poor investment in most countries. Its far more advantageous to provide potential craftsmen with general secondary education and then develop their skills on the jobs. In other words, formal pre-employment education should aim at forming trainable people, while the task of developing specific skills should be the responsibility of the employers both public and private.
-THE CHOICE OF INCENTIVES ;The fifth area of choice which is of great importance to the general planner as well as to the educational planner is that of incentives. To get into certain occupations, do you rely on the freeplay of the market or do you provide incentives and manipulate them constantly, as the situation demands, so as to create differential salary scales and raise the financial rewards and status of particular types of jobs? This is a vital and very difficult problem in many countries. In Iran for instance, the proportion of doctors to nurses is 10:1, where it should about one to ten. So the reason for this is that the salary and status for nurses are so low that nobody wants to enter the nursing profession. Similar considerations apply to technicians, engineering assistants and agricultural assistants in many countries. As a result, its often more important for the educational system to produce nurses rather than doctors, or engineering and agricultural assistants rather than graduate engineers and agronomists. Confronted with a situation of this kind, you can leave the differentials in pay and status as they are or you can work out a new system of remuneration which rewards the technicians willing to dirty his hands in the factory as much as the graduate engineers who refuse to budge from their office and the medical technician who goes with antibiotics and promote measures of public health as much as the doctor who refuses to move out of the urban center. These are difficult choices to make but unless they are made thoughtfully, great amounts of money will be wasted. The study of incentives is an integral and indispensable part of educational planning, and a planner who ignores the incentives structure of his society is like an ostrich hiding his head in the sand.
-THE PURPOSE OF EDUCATION; The sixth and the last area of choice is concerned with the very purpose of education. Should education aim at satisfying the needs, desires and hopes of individuals, or should it be directed towards meeting the deeds of the state? Countries professing the so called liberal philosophy would naturally favor the first alternative, and those professing the communist philosophy would choose the second, but the problem is not nearly so simple in the new, developing countries.
Therefore; educational planning is the application of rational systematic analysis to the process of educational development with the aim of making education more effective and efficient in responding to the needs and goals of its students and the society (Coombs 1970).
johnson mwenjera answered the question on March 13, 2018 at 17:40