Administrative support for educational reform

114 Pages·2009·8.73 MB·English

Administrative support for educational reform
Administrative support for
educational reform
Final report of an IIEP/ROEA Seminar
held at Bangkok
21-25 February 1977
by Raymond F . Lyons
International Institute for Educational Planning
Composition and make-up by ÏÅÐ
7-9, rue Eugène-Delacroix, 75016 Paris
August 1977
© Unesco 1977
C O N T E N T S
Preface '
Statements by M r . Raja Roy Singh, Director, R O E A and
M r . Hans N . Weiler, Director, H E P at the inaugural
sesion on 21 February 197 8
Analysis of national experience regarding administrative
suport for educational reform 14
Summary of introduction made by M r . H . N . Weiler to his paper
on "the planing and administration of educational reform" 23
The contribution of an inspectorate to educational reform. Summary
of introductory statements by M r . M . W . Pritchard and M r . R . F . Lyons 26
Deliberations of the Working Groups on problems of planning
educational reforms: communication and suply and training of personel 30
Statement by M r . J. Oxenham, Raporteur for Working Group A 31
Statement by M r . G . Carón, Raporteur for Working Group  34
Statement on the rôle of research in support of educational reform
by M r . J. Oxenham, Raporteur for Working Group A 49
Statement on the rôle of research in support of educational reform
by M r . G . Carón, Raporteur for Working Group  51
Concluding contributions 56
Appendices A - G
Sumary Table (Apendix A) 60
Administration of Education in the Asian Region
by the Unesco Regional Ofice of Education in Asia (Apendix B) 63
The planning and administration of educational reform
by M r . Hans N . Weiler, Director, H E P (Apendix C) 73
The contribution of an inspectorate to educational reform
by Mesrs. Raymond F . Lyons and Mervyn W . Pritchard (Apendix D) 8
Report of Working Group A (Apendix E) 98
Report of Working Group  (Apendix F) 107
List of participants (Appendix G) 114
PREFACE
This seminar arose from the Institute's own study of the primary school inspectorate which like
the seminar itself was partly financed by the Overseas Development Ministry of the United Kingdom
and the Canadian International Development Agency. From this initial work, it became clear that
the issues of reform and administration should be seen within the broader generic perspective
of the relationship between administration and pedagogical reality. There seemed to be a need
in this connection to clarify, through a process of airing the queries and doubts of practical admin-
istrators, the notion of educational planning in relation to the problems of educational reform and
change. In particular, it seemed desirable to focus attention on the communications and decision-
making aspects of reform, and the conditions, constraints and limitations on the ways in which
Ministries can use planning in order to put strategies for change into practice. The -Institute
also hoped, through this interchange with high level officials, to derive important insights into
priority needs in further research and training on the relationship between educational planning
and administration in the context of educational reform.
The seminar, organized by the H E P in co-operation with the Unesco Regional Office
for Education in Asia, was held in Bangkok from 21 to 25 February 1977. It was attended by 1 I
senior officials of Ministries of Education in Asian countries, staff members of the H E P and
the Bangkok office, as well as observers. The countries represented were the following:
Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines,
Singapore, Thailand.
The report of the seminar contains a synopsis of the statements made by the partici-
pants concerning the achievements and the problems of the educational reform process in their
countries. It also includes the presentation and discussion of prepared papers as well as work-
ing group reports on problems of planning, communication, supply, training and research in
support of reform. It is our hope that these proceedings of what proved to be a very lively and
stimulating meeting will be of interest to all those who are seeking to improve and modernise
their administration so that it is able to manage educational reform.
R. R. Singh, Director H . N . Weiler, Director
Unesco Regional Office for Education in Asia International Institute for Educational
Bangkok Planing
Paris
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STATEMENT BY M R . RAJA ROY SINGH, DIRECTOR, ROEA
AT T H E INAUGURAL SESSION ON 21 FEBRUARY 1977
It is an honour and privilege for me to extend you a most cordial welcome on behalf of the
Unesco Regional Office for Education in Asia and on my personal behalf. May I offer special
welcomes to our distinguished participants and express my gratitude to them for being with us
for this seminar, despite their heavy management preoccupations with affairs at home. I sin-
cerely hope that you will find the deliberations of the seminar fruitful and your stay in Bangkok
agreeable in every way. W e in the Regional Office deeply value this opportunity which has
brought together such a unique wealth of experiences from the sharing of which, I assure you,
our own services to the countries will benefit greatly.
I a m grateful to the H E P and to M r . Weiler and his colleagues who are present with
us for their good thought in convening this seminar in the Asian region. This is the first
regional activity that the IIEP has undertaken in the Asian region; we attach to it special
significance and hope that it will set other activities in train. I extend you a warm welcome
on behalf of all m y colleagues in this Regional Office and place such facilities as we have at
the disposal of the seminar.
The theme of the seminar is of immediate interest to the countries in this region.
Educational reforms in the sense of designed and systematic efforts to bring about large-scale
changes in education have been with us for over three decades, in one form or another. M y
estimate is that every country has had on average three cycles of educational reform » and
some countries have adopted the strategy of continuous reform. There have been shortfalls,
and in certain types of educational reforms quite large shortfalls, in performance. Such
shortfalls have drawn attention to possible weaknesses in the administration of reforms. But
there have also been substantial gains, not the least of these gains have been precisely in the
area of administrative support.
For example, two or three decades ago, the administrative structure for education
was quite simple, consisting of control, supervision and support services in relation to
educational institutions. The business of education was carried out in the educational
institutions and any changes or reforms meant changing or re-orienting the institutions.
Typically there would be a central department of education for overall policy making and
control; an inspectorate to supervise and guide the educational institutions; a series of teacher
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Statement by M r . Raja Roy Singh, Director, R O E A
training institutions to train educational personnel, notably teachers; and the schools. Every
educational reform, whether fully or only partially implemented, has brought about changes in
the educational administrative structure. The cumulative effects of these changes are to be
seen in the present administration, a marked characteristic of which is a diversified array of
institutional structures; at the central level, curriculum development centres, in some countries
research and development centres, equipment centres, educational facilities centres, instructional
materials production centres, educational planning divisions, non-formal education programmes,
some kind of co-ordinating district or provincial education offices, the field offices of special
programmes such as non-formal education or adult education, geographical localization of
teacher-training institutions and now in some countries a marked trend towards creating at
intermediate level also specialized centres as extensions of national curriculum development
centres or R & D centres. This increasingly diversified structure is intermeshed with other
bodies and organizations which now carry much greater weight in education than before; for
instance, bodies of local government, the general development offices of the government,
field offices of other Ministries such as agriculture, co-operatives, etc., and not least, the
private organizations which control and finance the "private sector's" educational institutions.
At the ground level too the scene is changing. Schools of various types and at different
levels remain of course the more visible instruments of education, and the major preoccupation
of administration. But clearly they are no longer the exclusive focus as before. More and more,
the community outside the school is entering into this focus. It underlies the national concerns
for relating education to national development. It expresses itself in programmes of non-formal
education, of adult education and literacy, of integrating education "with work experience and
in the attempts to engage the research capabilities of universities and institutions of higher
learning in problems relevant to national development. I personally believe that in the immediate
years ahead the most far-reaching changes in the administration of education will emerge at the
ground level and at the intermediate level. The degree to which administrative capacity is e m -
powered and developed at these levels will determine the effectiveness of administrative support
to educational reforms in the coming years.
The point I should like to make from the foregoing is that administration of education-
al reform and the reform of educational administration cannot perhaps be separated except by
taking both administration and educational reform out of the context of the live conditions in
which they operate. They affect each other too closely, negatively or positively. On the
positive side, an educational reform is a challenge which in evoking a response activates changes
in an administration which otherwise by its very nature must seek the lowest common deno-
minator of stability. On the negative side, an educational reform which is only intended to
undo what a previous educational reform may have initiated, creates instabilities and disconti-
nuities of a magnitude such as to make administration impossible. Similarly, administration
affects reform positively or negatively. Positively it will make the intended goals of the reform
an integral part of the day-to-day business of education, raising it to a higher level of stability.
A reform is no longer a traumatic experience; by becoming part of the system and raising
that system, it has empowered the system for the next reform. Negatively, an administration
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Administrative support for educational reform
which is unprepared to handle a reform, changes the reform into what it can handle. Here the
array of administrative procedures comes in handy-but handiest of all are the academic slogans.
Ho w many attempts towards equality of educational opportunities or evolving new configurations
of learning, for example from work experiences, have not been tamed into innocuousness by
the slogan of quality of education! Not that the concept of quality is not of fundamental import-
ance; it is, but as a slogan it is pathogenic of confused thinking and action.
M r . Weiler's paper for the seminar ("The planning and administration of educational
reform") has most perceptively identified the major issues around which many educational re-
forms are organized. I believe that the major issues he has identified apply equally to the re-
forms in the Asian region. The methods used for formulating reform measures have varied from
one country to another as also the time lags when a major issue became manifest in one country
or another. In many countries educational reforms are formulated by high-powered commissions
or councils set up for the purpose; in others, reform measures are embodied in the five-year
plans; and in a few countries major educational reform measures are announced and decreed
at high political level.
By and large, what might be called the first generation of educational reforms (and in
most countries they took place in the decade of the 1950s) was concerned, broadly speaking, with
the extension of replication of the existing systems, more particularly with institutions. In
countries which were formerly under colonial domination, the first generation reforms also
tried to rectify some of the distorting features of the then education systems; for example, the
place and status of the national language, distribution of educational facilities in the rural areas,
etc. Administrative support for the first generation of reforms was called upon to deal with
problems which were, except for their larger scale of operation, within the existing patterns
of administrative experience. Measured quantitatively, the implementation of these first
generation reforms showed up well. The educational planning procedures were a reflection
of these reforms and were preoccupied with quantitative projections of the various inputs for
the expansion of an existing system - cost, number of teachers, number of supervisors, levels
of training and manpower output.
The second generation of reforms (mostly^ occurring in the 1960s) was faced with the
problem of imbalances within the education system in different levels and types of education and
more importantly with the content of education. The content of education was seen mainly in
terms of a better organization of knowledge; the favourite phrases being "modernization",
"up-to-dateness";, etc Foreign models were heavily influential. Administrative support for
the second generation of reforms was a much more complex undertaking. It did not call so
much for new administrative behaviour patterns as for a larger body of knowledge. The es-
tablishment of new specialized institutions, to which I referred earlier, was really a response
to the need for widening the professionalized knowledge base.
The current reforms are distinguished from the preceding ones by the new social di-
mensions in which the tasks of education are seen. They are reflected in concerns such as
equality of educational opportunities built on a mass base; questions of relevance to and
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Statement by M r . Hans N . Weiler, Director, H E P
authenticity of national goals and aims; social commitment; distributive justice, notably educ-
ation of the deprived populations; development of indigenous methods, content and technologies.
Clearly issues of this nature cannot be dealt with on the basis of administrative experiences of
the past. N e w capacities have to be generated, and this is undoubtedly a major challenge to
the familiar and the known.
Ladies and gentlemen, I apologize for the length of m y footnotes. They only express
perplexities, and I a m confident that the seminar's deliberations will help to charter some of
these issues.
STATEMENT BY M R . HANS N . WEILER, DIRECTOR, HEP
AT THE INAUGURAL SESSION ON 21 FE B R U A R Y 1977
It is a very special privilege to be able to welcome you to this international seminar on
"Administrative support for educational reform". I a m most grateful for the response which
our invitation to this seminar has met with and the high level of experience and responsibility
which the participants around this table represent. I realize how busy you all are, and I
appreciate all the more not only your taking a week out of your busy schedule, but also your
taking the time and care to prepare such a remarkable set of written contributions on the ex-
perience of your country in the field of administering educational reform.
This is the first seminar of its kind which the International Institute for Educational
Planning has organized jointly with Unesco's Regional Office for Education in Asia. This joint
venture is another expression of how much importance the ÏIEP attaches to the rôle of the
Regional Offices of Unesco in the field of educational planning and administration and especially
to the fact that they are links between the concerns and problems of national authorities and the
research and training programmes of the Institute at the international level. I appreciate the
Regional Office's assistance in organizing and conducting this seminar and its contribution in
the form of an overview paper which you have before you.
Permit m e to elaborate for a moment on the background of this seminar. Just a few
months ago, Unesco held its 19th General Conference in Nairobi where one of the most significant
items on the agenda was the approval of Unesco's First Medium-Term Plan (1977-1982). In this
Medium-Term Plan, two objectives were addressed specifically to the problems of educational
planning and administration, and the General Conference approved a special emphasis on the
need for considering these objectives within the context of educational reform.
The work of the H E P has concerned itself for some time already with some of these
new dimensions of educational planning, which result from a more immediate preoccupation of
national authorities with the reform and renewal of education. W e have tried to seek ways in
which planning can be placed at the service of innovation, redistribution and reform, instead
of merely expanding the status quo. The Institute's research project on the primary school
inspectorate is a case in point where, in studying one of the more "classical" aspects of educ-
ational administration, the Institute has given^particular emphasis to the potential of the
inspectorate as a support service for educational innovation and reform. On-going research
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