NURUL SYAFIQA BINTI ISMAIL (GS58268)

Question:

Discuss comparative strengths and weaknesses of demographic, social and political

approaches, manpower and human resource approaches, as well as cost benefit and cost
effectiveness approaches in educational policy and planning.

Answer:

Educational policy and planning is concerned with the problems of how to make the
best use of limited resources allocated to education in view of the priorities given to different
stages of education or different sector of education and the need of the economy.

Demographic Approach

UNESCO (2003), considering the structure of a populace implies contemplating its

piece, i.e., its dissemination as per certain pre-characterized standards. Instructive organizers
might be worried about the dispersion of the populace for different reasons. To start with,
they might be keen on its conveyance by age and sex. This empowers them to quantify the
overall size of the young populace, which are the establishment and the purpose of take-off
for any instructive arrangement. Second, they might be worried about the dispersion of the
populace by area of monetary action and, inside every one of these areas, by occupation.
Without exact information on the conveyance by area and occupation, it is difficult to
appraise labour necessities, and thus to decide focuses for specialized, professional and
advanced education. Third, organizers might be worried about the geological conveyance of
the populace, which influences both the expense of instruction and the selection of types,
sizes and areas of schools. Our assessment of populace structure will be kept to the three
previously mentioned angles. To begin with, nonetheless, we should give a concise diagram
of the techniques for examining populace structure, and specifically strategies for registration
taking. Good socioeconomics are here and there alluded to as the "segment profit." This term
represents an open door that opens up in the segment direction of energetic nations. It is
described by an enormous working age population, which upholds less kids and a little age of
old people. Nations in this temporary segment circumstance in Asia are generally low-pay
nations (for example Cambodia) and lower-centre pay nations (for example India, Indonesia).
The degree to which benefits for financial improvement related with this arrangement can be
caught relies upon various variables, including the nation's capacity to make adequate
quantities of gainful positions. High youth joblessness rates just as an extension of the casual
economy across South East Asian and South Asian nations since 2000 have flagged the
challenges nations face in adjusting to quick segment changes. Difficulties are diverse for
nations described by a more established populace. In China, Japan, or Korea, for instance,
ripeness rates are beneath substitution level. Accordingly, the portion of the working
populace is more modest and mature age reliance proportions are higher, and quickly
expanding. In a 20 to 30-year point of view, the worry is the supportability of profitability
levels and expectations for everyday comforts. Upper-centre pay nations, for example,
Malaysia or Thailand are moving towards comparative situations that will unfurl around
2050. These nations wind up compelled to reengineer public approaches and re-evaluate their
spending needs, with rivalry among social area financial plans for schooling, wellbeing, and
care for the older expanding.

Social Approach

The strength of the social approach is encouraging mass education and mass literacy.
The goal of people who is designed the mass education is to distribute trained educators to
the right positions at the right time in the right place. In this case, the tasks that have to be
done is narrowing and clear like in elementary school, pupils need to learn essential
numeracy abilities such as tallying, adding or gain proficiency with the key fundamental
aptitude, such as, spelling, which appears to be fundamental and significant, then the teachers
will teach the students as needed. Secondly, Adesina, (1991) seen that policy makers and
governments locate the social approach simple to shield since the way of thinking of the approach
is the fulfilment of the instructive necessities of the individuals. It is an instrument for building
populist social orders. According to Musaazi (1985), the social approach can show the organizer
the assets that can be designated to each degree of training as long as certain current patterns
proceed and if private interest is to be fulfilled. It democratizes instructive open doors in the
general public. Social approach might be easy to achieve through political system tends to
respond to express needs and desires somehow the weaknesses of this a pproach is the
accessibility to education. Not saying that the connection but the gadget also not only for thus in
poor rural area, but also the poor in the urban area. It seem stress-free to handle when politician
take place in some way the racial issues might rise. Malaysian are normalizing help their own
race first and left other race behind even a lot of initiative have been done.

Political Approach

Education is one of the sensitive issues in Malaysia. The changes made in education
can be an exercise in maintaining the power and can control what already privilege. Since, we
need to invest more in education, politician need to do something to improve the system in
education. This is ever made by Barisan National through the program 1 Malaysia Netbook.
The netbook had been distributed to 1.2 million to the needed student. The program is very
helpful and the Barisan National has the power for the next election. The weakness of the
approach is the unfairness happen during the distribution. Even though, the program should
be distribute to poor one, but some of the people cannot get the netbook due to different of
parties.

Manpower Approach

Chiuri and Kiumi (2005) said that the manpower approach gives an important
guidance on the evolution of the educational qualifications of the labour force. This enables
planners to convert occupational pyramids of labour force into educational structure
indicating the level of formal educational requirement in each category of occupation. It
aims at self-sufficiency in manpower resources which is essential for manpower requirement;
we plan for the whole country and not particular regions. It enables educational planners to
examine the gaps and imbalances in the education output pattern against the available jobs in
the labour market. Therefore, planners are able to identify where there’s either
overproduction or underproduction of Labour force. This enables planners to divert allocation
of resources from educational programmes whose skills are in low demand to those whose
skills are in short supply in the labour market. It enables planners to evaluate whether and
how the education system is meeting the requirements of trained personnel in the
development of different sectors of the economy and also identifies changes to be introduced
in the system so as to fill any required gap. The approach offers a useful guide on the
required changes in the educational system and especially the curriculum so as to avoid the
production of residual and irrelevant labour force. However, Chiuri and Kiumi (2005) found
that the weaknesses of use the manpower approach because it tends to confine itself to the
high level manpower needed in the modern sector of the economy ignoring the educational
requirement of the unskilled and semi-skilled labour force, which forms the bulk of the
labour force. This category of labour force should however not be neglected as they are
mostly employed in the informal sector which is the largest and fastest growing sector in
third world countries. Tanzania for example decided in the early 1960’s to stabilize its
primary school participation rate at about 50 per cent in order to give temporary priority to
levels of education directly tied to economic manpower needs. It also tends to limit education
to strictly producing manpower while ignoring optimum resource allocation, cost benefit
analysis and social aspects of education. Education is not only an investment commodity but
also a consumption service. People may pursue education for non-financial or employment
gain for example to enhance their social status or ability to converse in a foreign language.

Human Resources Approach

The usefulness and importance of human resource as a system which is somewhat

analogous to as a system for the generation and distribution of power; one can identify skill-
generating centre such as schools, university, training institutes and employing organizations
which develop people on the job (UNESCO,1967). The approach designed to carry varying
loads; built in flexibility to meet such loads, be adequate in size and properly balance. The
human resource approach make it easier to identify in operational terms major problem areas
and it compels the analyst to examine the critical interrelationship between various manpower
and education programmed. It provides a logical starting-point for building a strategy of
human resource approach. The problem of the approach is shortage of persons with critical
skills and knowledge required for effective national development. It also lack of incentive for
persons to engage in certain kinds of activities which are vitally important for national
development.

Cost Benefit Approach

The value of books, stationery, and writing materials, can also be measured in terms
of money expenditure. In some countries books are financed out of public funds, and
provided free, or at a subsidized price. Like Malaysia, the textbook was subsidized for all
students at public school. In this case the appropriate way to measure their cost is by public
expenditure on books or materials. But in other countries pupils and students are expected to
buy their own books. In such cases, some estimate of private expenditure on books is needed,
because variations in methods of financing purchases make no difference to the true
economic cost of the goods. The benefit given can help the educators to remove the gap of
poor and rich student to get the same knowledge.

Cost Effectiveness Approach

The power of cost effectiveness is to provide a greater impact with available

resources. For instance, in the quest to raise student achievement, there are many alternatives,
including better teacher selection, smaller classes, longer school days, peer tutoring, and
computer-assisted instruction. A cost-effectiveness study has suggested that it is five to ten
more cost-effective to select teachers with higher verbal ability at the same level of
experience than to select teachers with greater experience at the same level of verbal ability
(Levin, 1970). This shown that the effectiveness cost do not indicate the less cost for achieve
a better education. Cost effectiveness also means that the cost maybe could be high and also
low but the true effectiveness is that there is no unnecessary cost leaking for non-beneficial
things in education. For example, the smaller class usually indicate more class should be
provided together with the teaching manpower, even though the effectiveness of cost do not
come from the less money invested but from the understanding and grabbing the concept of
the subject thus less teaching tools needed. In addition, computer-assisted instruction could
be cost effectiveness in the long-term situation as the short-term investing in computer
assistance requires a lot of funding. This is because as the time flow, the cost needed to hire a
technical assistance also could be a high cost.

Question:

Based on COVID pandemic experiences, what approach(s) would you suggest in policy
development and planning in education? Analyse your proposed approach(s) in terms of its
inclusiveness and accessibility in safeguarding better education for future generation.

Answer:

First of all, when we are facing the abnormal situation like Covid pandemic,
education field must have a plan that absorb emergency with minimum inconvenience. In this
case, the contingency having virtual class rather than physical class to minimize the risk for
students to get expose in pandemic situation. This is new norms for Malaysian especially for
primary and secondary student do the open and distance learning (ODL). Somehow, we need
to do this to help our nation to prevent the Covid to become worse. It might not be easy due
to our readiness to face the problem but we ought to have more policies or plans or strategy to
make this to be effective for all of students without anyone left behind in education.

Apart from that, in the same roof of Educational Planning, I propose the culture of
ODL be promoting to ensure that the traditional parents or parents in rural area adapt with the
new norms of learning. The strategies that can be applied are spreading the awareness
through media such as the Ministry of Education do some advertisement of how parents can
help the kids in learning at home and also involving the politicians to educate the people
around them and respective department by using his power.

Next, in education there must be a detailed account on what should be done. For
example, there must have a schedule or timetable of class that will be held. The attendance of
teachers and students must be recorded. If teacher do not feeling well, should have medical
certification as the attendance of going to school and there must another teacher who is
release the class. The same idea goes to student; they must have strong reason for not joining
the class. They cannot skip the class unnecessarily. If they cannot make the deal without
concrete reason, the authority should take an action towards the delinquency.

Furthermore, we should have to safeguard that right indications given in the hope that
the students in turn will actively involve in virtual class. The first and foremost, the Ministry
of Education ought to improve digital software that education friendly. For example, if we
using Zoom software to conduct the online class, it not friendly since it have limitation of
time (40 minutes per session). Virtuous software that stress-free to handle by Baby Boomers
generation teachers must be created so that the lesson can be conduct well. As the software is
friendly to everyone, there will be minimum issues regarding to the tools for having the
virtual class.

Besides focusing the right signal, we have to evoke that not all the student capable to
join the class, for the most part is the B40 family and also people in the rural area. Most of
them can afford the facilities like laptop or personal computer or tablet that we are using to
join the class. The support should be in term of providing facilities and internet connection
has to give to them so that they will not left behind in education. These needy groups have to
get the same knowledge and receive the same education as the other citizen to be fair and
there prevent the edification gap between the rich and the needy. This will be inflated if
government do it itself, somehow we also can increase non-governmental agency
involvement since there are a lot of registered NGOs and volunteers in Malaysia that always
ready to help the Malaysian. By involving them, many areas can be access and people in need
can be aid more rapidly.
References:

Adesina, S. (1990) Educational Management, FDP Education Series, Enugu: Fourth

Dimension Publishing Company Limited.

Chiuri L.W. and Kiumi J.K. (2005) Planning and Economics of Education. Egerton
University: Pangolin Publishers Ltd

Levin, H. M. (1970). A Cost-Effectiveness Analysis of Teacher Selection. Journal of Human

Resources, 5, 24-35.