The role and function of planning in any organisation or institution is undeniable. It plays a pivotal role in mapping the way forward and in allocating the appropriate resources to do so. It remains the nerve centre for the organisation as it provides feedback on performance and the need for changes designed to achieve greater efficiency and effectiveness in service delivery. Planning is a management tool and should be pursued at all levels throughout the organisation.
According to the Education Strategy Letter (Sept, 1995), The Planning and Development Section will have overall responsibility for:
- The long range planning of sector development and the related preparation of programmes (5 years) and projects and the conduct of research and policy studies in support of decision making and policy formulation.
- The development and maintenance of a statistical service for the sector would include a comprehensive database related analytical capacity to serve the education community and other public service needs; this database to include all students, teachers schools and services of the Ministry of Education, sector financing and cost and other relevant data as may be feasibly required.
The Education Strategy Letter identifies the key functions of the Education Planning Unit as follows:
- Long range planning
- Policy research and Analysis
- Data and information management
In addition, the Information and Communication Technology component has been housed within the Unit. This is essential since it is the infrastructure on which the data and information management systems of the entire education system depend. Since data and information are critical to planning, having control and management of its infrastructure is also essential for reliability, for upgrading and maintenance. The technology is available for other sub-sectors like curriculum development and teacher education to utilize in the conduct of their own activities. Given the pivotal role that information and data play in the functions of the Unit, retaining its control and management is vital. ICT, then, will be subsumed under data and information management.
The revised functions or TORs are as follows:
- Planning
- Policy research and analysis
- Data and information management
- Monitoring and Evaluation of plans and programmes
The framework outlined above shows the functions of EPU and its relationships to other units within the division. This diagrammatic relationship is important as a precursor to the process of forging close ties with the various units and to facilitate the ease of monitoring and evaluation as contained in the Corporate Plan.