Planning for learning

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33675, 26 October 1974, Page 10

Planning for learning

Education Planning in New Zealand. Edited by W. L. Renwick and L. J. Ingham. Government Printer. 431 pp. This collection of 18 papers on educational planning has been a long time a-borning. The seminar to which the papers were delivered was first mooted in 1970, held in May, 1972, and must be seen against the general backgorund of the National Goverment’s Educational Priorities Conference. The papers are grouped around three themes (educational planning and national economic planning, the structure and content of education, and techniques and information for educational planning). They range from theoretical discussions of the present state of the art to a detailed account of the methods used by the Department of Education to predict school rolls. Each paper is followed by a brief comment from a member of the invited audience of more than 100 economists, civil servants, research workers, representatives of special interest groups, and local and imported educationists. The SCIENCE FICTION

book concludes with a panel discussion of “accountability in education,” the principle of “user pays,” and of the community use of secondary schools. Avoiding the instant analyses of the New Zealand educational scene made by more recent visitors, Jacques Hallak, of U.N.E.5.C.0., Kjell Eide, of Norway, and William Taylor, of Britain, deal with the general limitations, strengths, and functions of various techniques of educational planning. The local contributors provide papers on such matters as curriculum development, adult education, school buildings, forecasting, budgeting, and educational assessment. Papers by the overseas visitors, and by New Zealand . experts on information processing, cost-benefit and cost - effectiveness analyses, manpower forecasting, and computer simulations, quickly dispel the illusion that these techniques can be imported to solve all our education problems or to make all our educational decisions for us. There are conceptual and methodological difficulties, and education is a complex business influenced by a host of social, politi-

cal, and economic factors. Moreover, even if the techniques were considerably improved they could only be aids to decision-making by educationists, politicians, or the general public. While this book provides no vindication of what has been termed “the economist’s view of education” it is by no means in support of the other extreme position, namely that education is a mystic, .ineffable process and the sole concern of its own high priests. Consider these questions: “Do graduates earn more than non - graduates?”, “Should they?”, "Do graduates have more fun?”, “Should they?”. To realise that these questions demand qualitatively different answers is to realise the natural limits, potential benefits, and proper place of the techniques educational planners have developed.

This book should also provide those with an enduring interest in education with some understanding of the sieve through which the myriad recommendations from the public phase of the recent Education Development Conference will have to pass before they make any difference to anyone.