Page 103 - DEDU503_EDUCATIONAL_MANAGEMENT_ENGLISH

Unit 7: Planning: Process and Means

Costing and Budget Preparation Notes
An important step in the plan formulation exercise is the costing and estimation of financial
requirements to implement the plan. Translating the physical inputs into financial requiremets is
essential for funding purpose. All the activities and tasks identified, which have financial implication,
are to be costed properly and budgeted adequately.Various steps that are involved in estimation of
financial requirements are : (i) listing of all the activities to be undertaken (ii) classifying all these
activities into two categories i.e. activities having cost implications and activities which do not have
cost implications; (iii) classifying the activities which have cost implications into recurring and
non-recurring heads; (iv) working our the average cost of recurring activities and unit cost for non-
recurring activities (v) estimation of costs separately under the recurring and non-recurring heads.
While estimating the financial requirements for the Education Plan the recurring costs estimation
may be on items such as salaries, training maintenance of building, equipment, furniture,
infrastructure, travel costs; stationary and consumables, contingencies, rents etc. Similarly the non-
recurring cost estimation may be on items such as : construction of school building, additional
classrooms, toilets, compound wall, equipments, furniture; infrastructure; vehicle etc. The aggregation
of costs of all the activities and tasks under various strategies will give the total financial requirements
of the plan.
Allocation of resources to education is based on the budgets. Budgets are prepared annually to
facilitate the resource allocation process. This implies that these activities are to be classified according
to the year of beginning and completion of the activities. This may help in preparing the annual
budgets. The budget should correspond to the activities indicated to be completed in that particular
year.
While estimating the cost requirements for the plan it is of utmost importance to keep in view the
financial parameters fixed by the higher level decision making bodies with regard to Education
Plans to be formulated at the lower levels. The costing of the plan must adhere to the ceilings on
various items and other financial parameters prescribed by the approving body which may be the
national (i.e. central) government and/or the provincial government.
Implementation Schedule and Monitoring Mechanism

One of the important stages in planning exercise is detailing out the implementation plan. When
planning at the lower levels, e.g. district level planning, implementation is part and parcel of planning
activities. A plan document is incomplete if it does not contain detailed plan for implementation of
the programmes and projects that the plan contains. It thereby means that planning for
implementation should be inbuilt in the plan document. A failure in the achievement of plan targets
in the education sector is generally attributed to the lack of detailed planning for implementation.
Planning for implementation facilitates the process of implementation of programmes and projects
by providing a sound mechanism of monitoring in the form of implementation schedule and it also
increases the efficiency of the system by minimizing the costs of implementation of a given programme
or project.
Planning for implementation makes it possible to critically analyze the activities of a given educational
programme and to develop an implementation schecule which can be used for monitoring the
progress of implementation. There are certain steps that are necessary in planning for implementation
of educational programmes or projects. These are; listing of activities that make up the programme;
thinking through each of these activities; establishing inter-relationships between these activities;
establishing a network; setting activity duration; determining material, equipment and human
resource needs; deciding about time duration for the programme implementation of each activity;
identifying identical activities of the programme which can not be overlooked without affecting the
duration of the programme implementation and resources invested in it; and thinking about
organizational arrangements for carrying out programme activities.

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