MICRO PLANNING IN EDUCATION

MICRO PLANNING IN EDUCATION

Definition of micro planning

Education micro planning – education planning at the local (“micro”) level – is a holistic and participatory approach to local-level decision-making. While it is focused on the local level, it is linked to national and sub-national education policy directions. i.e.

·         Education micro planning involves planning at the local level, with the community affected by the education policy or reforms. It requires the participation of local actors, including, for example, district officers, school leaders, teachers, community groups, parents and students

·         Education micro planning takes up policy objectives that were set nationally or sub-nationally and prepares plans to implement those policies at the district and community level. The focus is on implementing common goals at the local level. Education micro planning assists local education authorities and communities to link national and sub-national education priorities to local needs. It involves identifying ways in which local communities and schools can put national or sub national policies into practice.

Why use education micro planning?

In many education systems around the world, the management of education has been decentralized to the province, state, district or community level. This shift compels education systems to decentralize planning, based on the principle that local level involvement in planning often results in more effective activities and outcomes than centrally directed plans and programs. This is because centrally directed plans and programs are often unable to take into consideration local needs and views and local barriers to policy implementation

Problems addressed by micro planning

Priority education policies are often defined at the national or sub-national government level and the policy objectives are often expressed in very broad terms (e.g. universal primary education, the inclusion of children with special needs, the achievement of gender equity and improving student learning outcomes in mathematics and science). Sometimes specific targets are set in relation to these broad policy objectives (e.g. universal education by 2015, the enrollment of 50 per cent of children with special needs by 2020), but they may be less relevant to local contexts. Local level planning is an attempt to develop local action plans to translate higher level policy goals into locally meaningful objectives and achieve locally relevant targets.

National governments are held accountable for their policies even though the necessary action to achieve these policy goals is often in the hands of local authorities such as counties, sub-counties, communities and schools. Education micro planning is the necessary link between national policy objectives and the actions taken locally to achieve these objectives. The particular issues that can be addressed by education micro planning depend on specific contexts, but the following are some examples of possible local issues that could be taken up in an education micro planning exercise.

• School enrollments are not meeting national or county targets;
• Literacy rates for girls are very low;
• The number of out-of-school children in the community is increasing
• The performance of local students on national tests e.g. KCSE, KCPE is below an acceptable standard;
• School buildings and facilities are not keeping up with demographic changes
• There is a lack of early childhood education and care facilities in the local community; and
• Children are not enrolled at the proper age.

Importance of micro-project planning

a)      Ensures local participation in both the planning and implementation process. This will promote in the people an identification with the plan, thus ensuring better implementation. Educational plans prepared at the micro-level are more feasible for implementation than the ones imposed from the top.

b)      Educational plans prepared at the micro-level are more sensitive and hence more responsive to the local needs and problems of the people. No educational plan prepared at the macro-level, however good it may be, can take into consideration the educational needs of people living in diverse areas i.e. in the plains, in hilly tracts, in urban areas  and  in rural areas. Micro-level arrangements provide an opportunity to ensure that the whole process of planning is in tune with local issues and balances.

c)      Can help the local people who are in control of affairs to reconsider, recast and amend plans in the light of rapidly changing circumstances in the socio-cultural, political and economic circumstances of the community which is served.

d)     Enables the local management and implementing machinery focus on the specific and varied needs of even smaller sections of the community. Micro-level educational planning can meet the diversified and specific needs of smaller groups of the community.

e)      Ensure the immediacy required between planning and its implementation micro-level planning reduce the time-gap between plan formulation and its implementation and thus help in achieving the objectives for which it was really meant

f)       Enable interaction between people which leads to a sense of oneness and homogeneity. This is conducive to closer collaboration in undertaking projects of common interest in monitoring progress, and introducing rapid and effective adjustments.

g)        Ensure commitment in the implementation process and mobilization of already existing resources and generation of new local resources to an optimum extent. This will reduce the financial burden on the national exchequer for providing education to the masses

h)      Serves as a means of further education for the people living in a particular community. It gives them a chance of identifying, thrashing out and analyzing their problems of the day. This has a multiplying effect in raising their understanding and conceivably their future quality of life.

i)        Can serve the cause of community education by paving way for a happy blend of formal and non-formal streams of general education. This is more likely to create a congenial atmosphere for the life-long and continuing education of citizens at large, and particularly for monitoring groups, tribal groups, the rural and urban poor, the out of school,  youth, children, farmers, artisans, landless, laborers, etc

Stages/phases of project planning

Definition of the Problem

 Questions must be asked such as: what is the current situation?    Who says it is a problem?    What will happen if nothing is done?   From these  questions,  a problem  can be  defined as a  situation  or  condition  of  people  or  organization  that  will  exist  in  the  future  and  that  is  however  considered  undesirable  by  the  members  of  such organization.  Once it is a situation of undesirability, it requests for urgent attention, so that there can be lasting solution to the problem at hand.

Setting the Objective:

Objective  is  what  is to  be  achieved  in  the  course  of  carrying  out  of  some activities.  Questions such as these can be asked; that what do I want the situation to be in the future?  How will I know when I have achieved it?    Therefore, an  objective  is  a  situation  or  condition  of  either  the  people or  an  organization  that  will  exist  in the future  and it  is   considered  desirable  by  the  members  of  such  organization.    The objectives should be specific, measurable statements  of  what  someone  wants  to  accomplish  at  a  given  point  in  time.    Objectives  are  also be  declarative statements  that  should  include  the  what, who,  when,  where  and  how  much  elements  or  variables  of  the  above  stated  problem  statement.

Objectives  may  aim  at  solving  a  problem  that  is  external  to  the organization  which  usually   is  a  problem  of  the  community  or  targeted  population.    Some other objectives may  target  solving  some  problems  that are  internal  to the organization and such  can  include staff  training needs  or  their  motivation.    In some other cases, objectives may be directed at changing the skills, knowledge or even the attitudes of people such as staff, clients, consumers, or even the general public.  You should  note  further  that  problems  are  stated  in  negative,  undesirable  terms  (which is however wrong  and fearful),  but  objectives will state  a  positive  and  desirable  situation.    It  must  be  remembered  that  a  problem  can  hardly be eliminated, and the size of the situation or condition is usually  smaller  in  the  objective  rather  than  in  the  problem  statement. 

Remember to limit the objective to a realistic level that is still considered desirable by the organization.

Choosing among Alternative Strategies:

In the process of choosing among alternative strategies, the following questions can still be asked: what are the possible ways to solve the problem?  what  resources  would  be  needed  to  do  each  alternative?,  which  alternatives  are  most  feasible?,  who  needs  to  be  involved  in  choosing which way is best?. A strategy is a series or group of  activities  which  are  carried  out  by  members  of  a  given  organization  targeted  at reaching the stated desired objectives.  In order to determine  the  appropriate  strategy  to  be  employed,  (i)  list  all  the  possible  ways  of reaching  the  objective  and  (ii)  analyze  each  alternative  from  several  aspects  by  including  available  resources, forces  within  the  environment  that  may  help  or  hinder  good  implementation,  and  evaluation  criteria  such  as:  appropriateness,  adequacy,  effectiveness,  efficiency  and  potential side effects which can be positive or negative

Preparation for Implementation

 The following questions should be asked:  What  arrangements  need to be made with other organizations and people  in  order  to  carry  out  the  plan?,  how  can  we  get  everything  done  as  scheduled?, how will the needed resources be discovered?  In order to get  prepared  for  implementation  of  the  project,  (i)  figure  out  what  major  activities  will  be  needed  and  in  what  order  should  they  occur?  (ii)  determine  a  schedule  for  completion  of  these  noted  activities  (iii)  calculate  what  resources  will  be  needed  to  complete  these  tasks  and  activities (iv)assign responsibility(ies) to someone for each activity (v)Plan what  specific  tasks  will  be  done,  who  needs  to  be  involved,  when  the  tasks will occur, and what  specific resources  will be needed  and how  to  obtain them, if necessary.

Remember  that  activity  is  a  specific  procedure  or  process  completed  at  a  certain  point  in  time  which  is  carried  out  by  personnel  within the system as part of strategy for realizing the desired objective.  A  task  is  a specific  process  or  procedure  that  includes what  will  be  done, when, and by  whom, that is part of a larger activity.

Monitoring: monitoring helps in in judging the status, progress and performance of plan implementation and points out the constraints faced. A well-developed monitoring mechanism is capable of anticipating or detecting stress points so that either preventive measures can be launched in advance or remedial actions can be taken. Close monitoring of the status and progress helps the micro planner to identify impediments at an early stage. Special measures may be taken immediately at the grass root level itself and corresponding adjustments may be introduced at different levels of the plan.

Whereas monitoring of a micro level educational project may indicate whether the tasks have been performed according to schedule with the timely input of requisites, assessment of the attainment of goals and objectives is called evaluation.

 Designing the Evaluation:

While designing the evaluation, some  important questions  can  also  be asked, and these  include: how  will  I  know  when I  have  achieved  my  objective?,  how  well  did  the  strategies  and  activities  work  out?,  how efficient  were  the  resources  used?    Outside these posed questions, it  must  be  noted  that  there  are  two  main  types  of  evaluation,  which  are  process evaluation and outcome evaluation.  

Process Evaluation :    The  process  evaluation  is  targeted  at  measuring  the  effectiveness  of  the  target  or  organization  to  carry  out  the  plan  as  designed  or  programmed.    So, each of the steps taken, is evaluated.

Outcome Evaluation:    This is intended to measure the degree to  which  the  objective  has  been  met  as  the  result  of  the  implementation  of  the  selected  strategies  and  activities.    Both the process and outcome evaluations are used of together.  While  a  process  evaluation  may  indicate  that  the  plan  is  being  well-implemented  though,  it  will  not  determine  if  the  strategies  and activities  implemented  are  effective  in addressing  the  problem. Similarly, outcome  evaluation may  indicate that  the  objective  had  been  met,  but  without  confirmation  that  the  process  was effectively implemented.  So, it may not be possible to attribute  the  impact  of  the  solution  to  the  problem  at  hand  and  to  the  actual  intervention in question

Steps to Preparation of Evaluation Strategy:

There  are  five  basic  steps  to  be  followed  in  the    preparation  of  evaluation design as propounded by Craig (1978) and these are:

(i)  Anticipation of what decisions might have to be made about the plan along the way.

(ii)  Look at each part of the plan and anticipate where a comparison of actual performance against planned performance might yield information that will help make key decisions.

iii)  Design measures of appropriateness, adequacy, effectiveness,  efficiency  and  side  effects  in  order  to  compare  actual  and  planned performance.

(iv) Figure out how to obtain the data for these measurements.

(v)  Determine who will analyze the data, how and when