Education System Management

“The world must move beyond helping children enter school to also ensure that they actually learn the basics when they are there.”

– Irina Bokova, UNESCO Director General

Educational planning may be defined as a practice aimed at preparing an education system for the future and facilitating the achievement of medium- and long-term goals set by policy-makers. To fulfill these functions effectively, planners need to have a good understanding of the concepts and theories that shape the tools and approaches of educational planning. 

IIEP works with ministries of education to assist them in strengthening their capacity to manage the education system. This is crucial because, in many countries, the critical deficiency is a lack not of funds but of human resource capacity to implement reforms and manage education in an efficient and effective way at various levels. 

Critical policy implementation and management issues can be addressed from different angles: One angle is to view the specific issues faced at the major levels of management/administration (system, project, regional/local and institutional levels); another is to deal with the main resources of educational development to be managed (human, financial, etc.). IIEP’s programme incorporates both approaches.

IIEP encourages education policy-makers to engage in broad-based participatory processes. At a time when citizen power is increasingly shaping civic and democratic renewal, the relevance of public action is enhanced when it adopts broad-based participatory processes and engages with authoritative sources of information, whether domestic or international, For ministries in charge of education, what is at stake is how stakeholders perceive the quality, relevance and responsiveness of education as a public good. 

During the 2018-2021 period, IIEP will support Member States so that ministries in charge of education:

  • have the competent human resources needed across the planning cycle;
  • can improve the processes and tools necessary for plan preparation, implementation, monitoring and review; and
  • can bring about a planning environment which is conducive to collaboration among political and technical staff in formulating policy, and one where staff engage with both other governments and civil society actors. 

 

What is educational planning? Watch our short video with Malia: