Describe the Social Demand Approach to Educational Planning

It’s the total sum of individual demands for education at a given place and time under the prevailing socio-economic political education.Social demand for education refers to the demand for education by the society or the pressure of the masses for access to education. The desire for education by the members of the society is very important and most governments find it difficult to resist.The approach emphasizes the consumption function of education unlike the MRA which emphasize the investment function. The approach is also called the traditional to learning approach because it tends to look at the demographic trends in order to estimate the school population. The approach considers the following key questions:
- How many children are born each year?
- How many children born are of school age?
- How many children of school age desire or demand education?
The approach examines the demographic trends such as:fertility,death rates,mortality,age ,sex and migration and at the same time everybody it emphasizes the freedom of individuals choice in acquiring education for himself/herself n his/her children.
The approach is also known as the cultural demand approach because education is influenced by the culture of the society. The government responds to nurturing the social demand for education by provision of FPE n FDSE, provision of scholarship, grants and loans.

This approach was used in the Robbins Committee Report on Higher Education in Britain. In India too, this approach is a
popular one while opening new schools and colleges in particular.
In this method are involved the following steps:
(a)To estimate the proportion of students completing school education and are likely to enter into higher education.
(b)To estimate how many of these successful school leaving students would actually apply for admission to colleges.
(c)To determine how many of the applicants should be given admission to higher education.
(d)To determine the length and duration of the study.

Thus, the major issue involved in this approach is to forecast future demands for seats keeping in mind social and
educational trends as well as demographic changes. The underlying assumption in this approach is that expansion of
education is beneficial to the economy and thus, additional expenditure on education would not create a burden too heavy
to bear.
This approach is more prevalent in those societies which favour traditional cultural values, where decisions are taken on
the basis of public opinions (in a fragile polity and sometimes in a democracy) and in societies where the social
environment is generally pessimistic in nature.
The approach is based on currently expressed preferences and does not take into account public expenditure on education
vis-a-vis the benefits as the demand for education may far exceed the resources available in a vast country like India.
Also, it sometimes leads to a mismatch between the output of higher education and the demands of the economy.
The social demand has been high that the government has not been able to meet it. Evidence:
? There are many Kenyans seeking University education in overseas countries.
? Current policy encourage private initiatives in higher education by the government.
? The current policy of cost sharing in provision of education.
? The increase of public universities and several constituent colleges serves to explain the social demand in
education.

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Kavungya answered the question on April 3, 2019 at 06:13