EDUCATIONAL PLANNING

1951 The 14th International Conference on Public Education, IBE, Geneva, recommends the drawing up of plans for the universal provision of compulsory education 1958 Inter-American Training Seminar on Overall Planning for Education, UNESCO/OAS, Washington 1959 International Symposium on Educational Planning in Relation to Economic and Social Development, UNESCO/IEDES, Paris 1961-1963 Establishment of regional educational planning centres in Beirut, New Delhi, Santiago and Dakar 1963 IIEP created

A TOOL FOR THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE RIGHT TO EDUCATION UNESCO made a decisive contribution to educational planning by proposing that national plans should be drawn up in a regional context – an innovation which consisted in convening the ministers of education of a particular region to carry out a review of the educational situation, to consider educational trends, problems and prospects, and to draw up priorities, strategies and plans for educational development. The Organization was instrumental in setting up regional centres and the International Institute for Educational Planning, and sent experts into the field. By so doing, it was able to make theoretical advances, train personnel for national planning services and provide direct assistance to Member States. With the growing emphasis on qualitative considerations alongside the purely quantitative factors, these activities helped to extend and diversify the approaches to planning. The regional conferences of ministers of education, soon extended to include the ministers responsible for economic development, paid increasing attention to the implementation of the right to education for all and to the goal of democratization. THE EMERGENCE OF EDUCATIONAL PLANNING In the aftermath of the Second World War the need for reconstruction, the quickening pace of scientific and technological progress and far-reaching cultural transformations made sweeping reform of education systems essential. Planning – a process borrowed from the economic sector – began to be applied to education. It made its first official appearance in 1951, when the International Conference on Public Education called upon countries concerned to draw up plans for compulsory education. (1) An initial round of regional conferences then took place on ways and means of introducing free and compulsory education. (2) The participants recommended the use of planning and called for assistance by the Organization in setting up national planning services. The Major Project on the Extension of Primary Education in Latin America, launched in 1957, included a systematic study of planning methods and techniques. (3)

PLANNING THE EXPANSION OF EDUCATION From the 1960s, with longer periods of schooling in the industrialized countries and, above all, the accession to independence of a great many countries of the South, a more comprehensive form of educational planning was needed. (4) Within the context of the United Nations Development Decade it became necessary for every State to plan its education system as a whole, with a view inter alia to harmonizing reform at every level, gaining an overview of the various projects in hand and assessing the repercussions in a number of areas, such as costs, teacher training and school buildings. (5) The use of planning became and was to remain the chief method of analysis, diagnosis, forecasting and financing. The ministerial conferences held from 1960 to 1965 (6) were to give decisive momentum to action in support of educational planning. On the basis of a study of development needs (viewing education as an investment) and of the cost of meeting them, the Addis Ababa Conference adopted a Plan for African Educational Development in 1961. This plan, the first of several, laid down priorities for the different levels of education (including adult education) and drew up costed programmes for the forthcoming five and twenty-year periods. Follow-up mechanisms were put in place. The development of large-scale activities in the regions and in individual countries pointed up the need for action in two areas: (7) the rapid training of key personnel for the new national planning services and the further refinement of methods on the basis of experience and research findings. To this end, the Organization set up regional educational planning and administration centres which organized training courses and seminars. It also sent out experts to backstop national services. (8) The International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP) was set up in Paris in 1963 to carry out research and higher education activities. Throughout this period of economic growth, the implementation of national plans benefited greatly from increased contributions from the Special Fund and, from 1966 onwards, from UNDP. In 1964, a co-operation agreement was signed with the World Bank, which had just extended its investments to include the education sector. Under the terms of this agreement UNESCO mounted several hundred missions for the identification and preparation of education projects in Member States over a period of close on twenty years. This systematic action helped to incorporate education more closely into development strategies and to induce economists and financiers to accord it its rightful place in both national efforts and external aid, in particular international assistance, as demonstrated by the survey presented at the first International Conference on Educational Planning (Paris, 1968). Of the 98 countries about which UNESCO had received information, 80 had already adopted educational development plans. Of these, 17 were in Africa, 11 in Latin America, 21 in Asia, 10 in the Arab States and 21 in Europe and North America; 7 other countries were in the process of drawing up a plan. (9)

Howard E. Wilson (United Kingdom) Deputy Executive Secretary, UNESCO Preparatory Commission The four factors conditioning contemporary educational planning: the devastation of war, accumulated knowledge about the educative process, new tools of learning and fluidity of contemporary education. UNESCO Conferences at the Sorbonne, Paris, November 1946 G. Betancour-Mejia (Colombia) Minister of Education, then Assistant Director-General for Education, UNESCO, from 1963 to 1966 The plan, when it is adopted, must have the support of public opinion. It should not be the plan of a single person or group, for if it was, its life would be brief. It has to be a national plan. Principles of Educational Planning, First Five-Year Plan, Bogota, 1957 Malcolm S. Adiseshiah (India) Deputy Director-General of UNESCO from 1963 to 1970 Educational planning must break through its traditional quantified school frame and cover all education. […] Educational planning can only be an effective instrument of comprehensive development if it contributes, through the choices which it makes possible, to a renewal of the education process. The latter should be conceived as a permanent lifelong process, and the confusion arising out of traditional identifications between education and school education should be resolved. ‘Prospects for lifelong education’, The UNESCO Chronicle, Vol. XV, No. 2, 1969