Education and man power the planning of education: the process of formulating a plan

Abstract

The African countries are at present engaged in a planning enterprise which should enable them to speed up their economic and social development and to achieve a greater well-being to which everyone aspires. It is now accepted that development cannot be left to the discursion of market mechanisms the operation of which is often distorted, but that the public authorities must take the responsibility for carrying out some or all of the investment and, if need be, of guiding the decisions of private entrepreneurs. Education for its part has long been regarded as a public service which it is the government's duty to provide. Hence, even before any development plans were formulated, the educational sector at least as regards public education had been subject to soma form of planning. In every financial year the public authorities had to allocate some of their available budget resources to education and to the various types and levels of teaching. However, the formulation of development plans in most African countries has not automatically led to a complete integration of education in the planning enterprise. It is true that nearly all plans include a section dealing with education, but the planning of that sector is often done without much reference to considerations ether than educational ones. This lecture will only deal, however, with a particular aspect of educational planning: the stages in the formulation of a plan.