English abstract
This study aims at investigating the requirements for activating the educational planning departments as stated in the literature, to identify the areas of strength and weakness in those planning departments in the Sultanate, to determine whether or not there are statistically significant differences in identifying the aspects of strength and weakness due to the demographic and organizational variables: organizational level, job, years of experience, and finally to propose procedures to upgrade staffs at the target planning departments in the ministry of Education in the Sultanate of Oman. The sample of the study comprised 87 persons assuming the following positions: director, deputy director, section head and technical members. This study used a 60-item questionnaire for the evaluation of educational planning staffs. The questionnaire is divided into 5 dimensions, namely; tasks and responsibilities, administrative organization, planning technologies, planning personnel, educational information. The study followed the descriptive approach. The study showed that the main aspect of strength in educational planning is the collection of the necessary statistical information to setup a plan, and to identify the requirements of school buildings, a description of nature of work relationship between the center and the directorates in the regions, the distribution of responsibilities for implementing the stages of the educational plan on different sections. In addition the working planning cadres have in-service training, and have the ability to explain the educational data available and provide data on the numbers of those who will be enrolled in education for the coming years and provide information on the elements of the educational system. The main weakness' area in educational planning departments is that they do not set up the suitable plan for the best use of educational status to identify its problems and capabilities. Their administrative organization does not help to apply authorization of power, and does not allow regions any kind of decentralization in educational planning, their cadres were not assigned according to objective standards and they are not specialized. They do not provide information and data on the needs of the labor market different specialization. And finally it does not provide any data on demographic distribution of the population
