Man Power Approach -Types of management approaches /School management B.Ed Notes

Types of management approaches

Management plays a crucial role in the making of any organisation. There is a need for adopting various approaches and techniques in the process of educational planning so as to arrive at the most realistic planning model to maximise the output.

There are different approaches to educational planning. Each planning approach has its unique features.

Few important approaches of educational management are

• Manpower approach
• Cost benefit approach
• Social demand approach
• Social justice approach
• Rate of return approach
• Intra educational extrapolation approach

Manpower approach

It is also known as "Human Resource Development Approach" which considers the fact that the social system requires different kinds of educated and trained people with certain well defined knowledge, attitudes and skills.

The focus of this approach is to forecast the manpower needs of the economy. It stresses output from the educational system to meet the manpower needs at some future date.

As an approach used in educational planning it aims to:-

i. Estimate the required number of graduates by education level in the economy.

ii. Estimate the number of teachers at different levels and types of education.

iii. Asses the existing curriculum and give recommendations for change.

The application of manpower planning approach depends on these factor

• An appraisal and analysis of the existing employment condition
• Planning the system of education.
• Using the financial resources without wastage
• Making an appraisal of the number of students enrolled, the number of existing teachers and their qualification, enrolment in teacher education institutions, as well as the existing number of school buildings, equipments, infrastructure and other facilities.

According to this approach, education holds a significant position in the country’s economy and majority contributes to the nation’s growth, emphasising necessity of education.

It takes note of the fact that the teaching profession requires approximately 60% of the highly qualified human resources of a country which competes with the demand for manpower in other economic sectors.

Advantages of manpower approach

• 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.
• Since the approaches focuses on manpower needs of a country, it effectively guides educators and policymakers on how roughly educational qualification of the labour force ought to be developed in the future.
• 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 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.

Disadvantages of manpower approach

• It tends to limit education to strictly producing manpower while ignoring optimum resource allocation, cost benefit analysis and social aspects of education.
• It confines 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.
• It ignores the consideration of costs involved or the capacity of their country to finance its labour development
• The approach relies on existing labour market rather than on the optimal use of the available human resource. It may thus over estimate labour needs in a situation where the available labour is not being utilized optimally.
• The approach relies on borrowed employment classification and educational requirements for each job category from the Western world. These classifications may not necessarily reflect the situation in the developing nations. For instance the educational qualification of a teacher, doctor or engineer in the developed world may not be the same as in the developing countries. Also the manpower, population ratios for various countries may differ such as desirable ratio of engineers to technicians, doctors to nurses, etc.
• It is impossible to make reliable forecast of manpower requirements far enough ahead of time because of many economic, technological and other uncertainties which are involved.