Page 164 - DEDU501_DEVELOPMENT_OF_EDUCATION_SYSTEM_ENGLISH

Development of Education System

Notes at block and cluster levels and management training institutions like SIEMT provide the
facilitating conditions.
(ii) Planning Competencies: DPEP envisages the planning responsibility to be undertaken
entirely by the people at the district level. This necessitates developing planning
competencies at the district level. The best way to develop competencies is to initiate
planning exercise in a realistic fashion. The planning methodologies are simplified and
are easily understandable by the people at the district level.
The national and state resource organizations help in developing planning competencies.
This help was of two kinds: (i) in developing basic framework for planning education at
the district level; and (ii) organizing programmes to train the local level people. In the
context of DPEP, NIEPA developed a document detailing the methodology of district
planning (Varghese: 1993) and organized and participated in several workshops. But they
do not directly and actively intervene in the planning exercise. The experience in the last
one-year has shown that such competencies can be developed at the local level itself.
While the broad parameters are decided through a consultative process, the districts have
the full freedom to put targets, to evolve strategies and to schedule activities. In short the
planning exercise takes into account local requirements and prioritizes them and thus it
becomes an exercise in developing local level competencies in planning. Moreover, financial
outlays are ensured to achieve the thus set targets.

The district plans under the DPEP envisage first to achieve the horizontal
integration of the district level programmes and then to vertically integrate them
with the state level and national level initiatives. This helps in ensuring local
autonomy, competency and administrative capability. The process of capacity
building is a part and parcel of the planning exercise.
The district plans are drawn for a period of 6 to 7 years with detailed schedules and
activities for each year. The allocations are made each year based on the performance in
the previous year and evaluation of the proposals for the coming year.
(iii) Participatory Process of Planning: The district level plans are developed by those people
who are the direct beneficiaries of the programme. This necessitates a consultative process
to arrive at areas of convergence to set priorities.
The consultative process under the DPEP is not confined to any committee approach. On
the other hand, the emphasis is on consulting the public. The local level bodies like the
panchayat, parent-teacher associations, teacher unions village education committees,
educational functionaries at the local level are to be consulted to evolve a plan that can be
owned by the local people.
Participation in the planning process takes place at different levels. First, participation by
the different departments involved with the delivery of educational and related services
in a district. Second participation by the people who have to own and operationalize the
programme. This has taken place in a very successful fashion in many of the districts. This
consultative process has indeed raised the expectation levels of people from the programme
and has created urgency in implementing the programme.
The major thrust of the plans is not only to develop education but also to create conditions
for initiating development efforts at the local level. DPEP, in this sense, is an exercise in
expanding capabilities of people to enable them to take responsibilities of their own
development within the broad contours drawn by the national and state priorities. The
necessary shift is from the sophisticated process of model building to a simple and down
to earth expression of felt needs in a systematic way. This liberates the plans and planning
process from the bureaucratic controls technocratic approach. The TLC experience in the
participatory process may be an asset to redefine the roles of different actors in the process.

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