Educational planning Need based and Value based
Introduction to educational planning
-Educational planning in the developed world
-Educational planning in the developing world
Defining education
-Need-based education
-Value-based education
Education in religion
Education today can be thought of as a vital element with which an economy can develop its
various sectors through long term investments. In the latter part of the 21st century,
developing economies had acknowledged and accepted the significance of education in the
overall growth of the economy. With a highly skilled labour force, countries could now boost
national incomes and attain higher standards of living. Given this valuable aspect of
education, should we only focus on the material relationship of our education system and
the economy? Should we not pay heed also to the dynamic effects of our education system
on the society also?
Education is much beyond learning the alphabet, it is beyond acquisition of skills , receiving
training, getting in a habit of going to school, it is not a mere tool with which one earns
bread, it is beyond the mere polishing of the animal instincts of a being.
In the present dynamic and complex scenario, education has become a commodity, an
abstract commodity which attaches a label of value to a student and helps in the
subsequent acquisition of a job for him. If at all education must be thought of as a good
then education must be regarded a welfare good since we only inherit it from the society
and not necessarily contribute back to it. Should we not have a sense of trusteeship or
responsibility towards our society? Is the economy more important than the society we
dwell in? Should not the economy and the society complement each other?
Given the significance of education in a person’s life, the question which needs to be asked
is are we at all getting educated? Or do we all receive a prolonged training from childhood
to adolescence to be later used as an input in the larger sphere of an economy. Today all
curriculum and systems of education are based on what the child would and might need in
the future when he/she grows-up, hence the system has become strictly need based. It is
the very reason why the educated lack that feeling of being empowered and lack that sense
of being equal participators in the civil society especially in developing regions. The urge for
being successful narrows down the inherent curiosity and spontaneity which had contributed cumulatively through discoveries, explorations and inventions to our
generations and led to the very development of modern civilisations.
Education system moulded for the future needs of a child which inculcates imparting of
skills, training and information deemed important for the child to be able to survive in the
society which prepares us as a machine, an input in a production function. Certainly human
beings are much more than mere inputs of a economy. It’s the very humans who constitute
an economy, not the other way round. The utter need for a value base system of education
is to bring back the ethics, morals and values that we find missing from daily civil life which
makes the humans more humane.
There is no denying the sheer and desperate need of education as an instrument playing a
pivotal part in the development of human capital of a country, a need based education
system is indeed the need of the hour with intense competition among countries trying to
outmatch and outpace each other. In such a scenario, a value based system of education
seems too far-fetched an idea. Also, imparting of ethics, values and morals at an elementary
level to some extent is pursued but inculcating religious, historical and political thought at a
higher level shall also not be complimented with the demand of the market. At the end of
the day, job-acquisition has become the sole purpose of education; a value based system of
education shall not hence suffice, so acknowledging the above two facts a hybrid system of
education can be pursued where a value based system prevails after which pupils can opt
for specializations in their higher education, get trained accordingly and acquire jobs given
their individual wants and the market demand.
Introduction to educational planning
In its broadest generic sense, 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 society. Its methodologies are sufficiently flexible
and adaptable to fit situations that differ widely in ideology, level of development, and governmental
form. Its basic logic, concepts, and principles are universally applicable, but the practical methods for
applying them may range from the crude and simple to the highly sophisticated, depending on the
circumstances. It is therefore wrong to conceive of educational planning as offering a rigid, monolithic
formula that must be imposed uniformly on all situations .It is equally wrong to conceive of educational
planning as being 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 so
often been used, but it is not an inherent limitation. It arises also because planning makes extensive use of
statistics. But it should be remembered that a statistic is merely the shadow of a fact, and the fact may just
as well be qualitative as quantitative.
Today’s educational planning can claim an unbroken ancestry running back to ancient times. Xenophon
tells how the Spartans, some 2,500 years ago, planned their education to fit their well-defined military,
social and economic objectives. For them producing good soldiers meant good education which was truly
need-based. Plato in his Republic offered an education plan to serve the leadership needs and political
purposes of Athens. China during the 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 in linking a society’s educational system to its goals, whatever these goals may be. Some later
examples show how educational planning has been resorted to in periods of great social and intellectual
ferment to help change a society to fit new goals. The architects of such plans were usually creative social
thinkers who saw in education a potent instrument for achieving reforms and attaining the ‘good life’
Educational planning in the developed world
Speaking roughly, the industrialized nations have passed through three educational phases from 1945 to
1970 and now find themselves in a perplexing fourth phase:
(1) the Reconstruction Phase;
(2) the Manpower Shortage Phase;
(3) the Rampant Expansion Phase; and
(4) the Innovation Phase,
each yielding a new crop of planning problems. The battle-scarred nations of Europe emerged from the Second World (continue reading here)
