Q1. A province studies population growth, school-age children and present school capacity, then decides where new schools will be needed over the next decade. The core of this work is planning because it:

• (A) Describes the history of the school system
• (B) Inspects existing schools for rule violations
• (C) Anticipates future needs and prepares an organized response to them
• (D) Distributes textbooks already in store

Q2. Which definition best describes educational planning?

• (A) The deliberate process of deciding educational objectives and the actions, resources and timing needed to achieve them
• (B) The routine checking of teachers’ attendance registers
• (C) The annual celebration of school achievements
• (D) The process of disciplining pupils who break school rules

Q3. A country faces rising enrolment, limited classrooms and a shortage of trained teachers. In this situation, planning is most needed because it:

• (A) Let each district expand at its own pace without a shared framework for teacher supply
• (B) Open new classrooms first and train teachers only after enrolment rises further
• (C) Set the same enrolment target for every district regardless of population growth
• (D) Balances growing demand against limited supply by setting priorities and phasing expansion

Q4. A headteacher who plans the school year in advance is better able to handle an unexpected teacher vacancy than one who does not plan. The most likely reason is that planning:

• (A) Prevents all staff from ever leaving
• (B) Provides a framework of priorities and alternatives that can be adjusted when problems arise
• (C) Makes the timetable impossible to change
• (D) Transfers all decisions to the district office

Q5. Which of the following best explains why planning is called the primary function of management in education?

• (A) It is the only function that involves money
• (B) It is carried out only by the most senior officers
• (C) It produces the most paperwork of any function
• (D) Other functions such as organizing, staffing and budgeting depend on the goals and programmes that planning establishes

Q6. Educational planning is important for national development mainly because:

• (A) It links the growth of education with the wider social and economic needs of the country
• (B) It increases the number of examinations held each year
• (C) It standardizes the design of school uniforms
• (D) It reduces the length of the school year

Q7. A ministry announces a new programme but gives no dates, no budget and no responsible officers. Teachers rightly complain that this is not a plan. Their complaint rests on the idea that a plan must include:

• (A) A slogan that everyone can remember
• (B) A list of past achievements of the ministry
• (C) Objectives together with actions, resources, responsibilities and timing
• (D) Approval from every parent in the country

Q8. Which statement best shows that educational planning is both a mental and a practical activity?

• (A) It involves only the use of statistical tables
• (B) It involves thinking ahead about goals and then organizing real action to reach them
• (C) It involves writing documents that are never read
• (D) It involves only the construction of school buildings

Q9. A district that plans its teacher recruitment a year ahead avoids the mid-session shortages that a neighbouring district faces every year. This contrast shows that planning helps education systems to:

• (A) Act in time, rather than reacting late to predictable needs
• (B) Spend more money on administration than on teaching
• (C) Depend entirely on central government for every decision
• (D) Avoid thinking about the future until problems occur

Q10. Which of the following is NOT a recognized purpose of educational planning?

• (A) To make the best use of available resources
• (B) To give direction and coherence to educational development
• (C) To anticipate future needs and problems
• (D) To make every school identical in size, staff and results

Q11. A national commission recommends restructuring higher education over the next fifteen years, with new universities, revised degree structures and changed funding patterns. This is an example of:

• (A) Routine planning for the next school term
• (B) Strategic planning, because it reshapes the system over a long period
• (C) Operational planning for one college
• (D) Emergency planning after a natural disaster

Q12. A provincial department decides how to phase in a new science curriculum over three years, including teacher training rounds and textbook supply schedules. This planning level is best described as:

• (A) Strategic planning, because it invents the curriculum
• (B) Operational planning, because it covers daily lessons
• (C) Tactical planning for one department only
• (D) Tactical planning, because it turns a broad decision into a phased programme over the medium term

Q13. A school prepares duty charts for examination week, seating plans and invigilation schedules. This is:

• (A) Operational planning, because it organizes specific, immediate tasks in the school
• (B) Strategic planning, because it affects national policy
• (C) Long-term planning, because it spans a decade
• (D) Manpower forecasting, because it predicts jobs

Q14. A plan to introduce computer laboratories in all secondary schools over the next four years, in stages by district, is best classified by time as:

• (A) Daily planning
• (B) Weekly planning
• (C) Medium-term planning, because it spans several years in stages
• (D) Long-term planning over a generation

Q15. Which example best illustrates long-term educational planning?

• (A) Arranging cover for an absent teacher tomorrow
• (B) Preparing the timetable for next term
• (C) Ordering textbooks for the current session
• (D) A thirty-year strategy to move the country toward universal secondary education and a skilled workforce

Q16. A school sets up a remedial programme for the next six weeks to help pupils who failed the mid-term test. This is best classified as:

• (A) Strategic planning for the province
• (B) Short-term planning, because it is limited to a few weeks and a specific need
• (C) Medium-term planning over five years
• (D) Long-term planning over twenty years

Q17. In a centralized system of educational planning, a school that wants to change its medium of instruction must wait for approval from the central authority. This illustrates that centralized planning:

• (A) Gives schools complete freedom over major decisions
• (B) Abolishes all national standards
• (C) Concentrates major decisions at the top, even when local conditions differ
• (D) Transfers funding decisions to parent committees

Q18. A province allows school management committees to prepare their own school improvement plans within a provincial framework and budget. This arrangement best illustrates:

• (A) Decentralized planning, because planning responsibility is shared with the school level
• (B) Centralized planning, because the province sets the framework
• (C) The abolition of planning at provincial level
• (D) Privatization of school management

Q19. A possible disadvantage of highly centralized educational planning is that:

• (A) Local planners gain too much power over national policy
• (B) Plans may be uniform and slow to respond to varied local conditions
• (C) National standards become impossible to maintain
• (D) Districts begin to duplicate each other’s work

Q20. A possible disadvantage of decentralized planning, if local capacity is weak, is that:

• (A) Central offices lose all ability to set standards
• (B) Decisions become too quick for schools to follow
• (C) Weaker districts may produce poorer plans and fall further behind stronger districts
• (D) National examinations must be abolished

Q21. Parents in a growing town demand more secondary places, and the government plans new schools mainly because applications have doubled. This decision follows the:

• (A) Social demand approach, because provision follows the expressed demand for schooling
• (B) Manpower forecasting approach, because it studies factory needs
• (C) Cost-benefit approach, because it measures graduate earnings
• (D) Social justice approach, because it targets girls only

Q22. An industrial region expects growth in manufacturing and plans new technical institutes to supply skilled workers for those factories. This is mainly an example of:

• (A) Social demand planning, because parents requested the institutes
• (B) Social justice planning, because it helps poor families
• (C) Manpower forecasting, because education is planned to meet projected workforce needs
• (D) Cost-benefit analysis, because it compares building costs

Q23. Before funding a new diploma programme, planners estimate its teaching costs, student numbers and the extra earnings graduates may gain over a working life. This is an application of:

• (A) Social demand analysis
• (B) Cost-benefit analysis, because costs are weighed against expected economic returns
• (C) Manpower forecasting alone
• (D) Social justice planning alone

Q24. A government reserves a share of new college seats and hostel places for students from flood-affected and remote districts. The guiding approach here is:

• (A) Social demand planning, because it counts applications
• (B) Manpower forecasting, because it counts job vacancies
• (C) Cost-benefit analysis, because it counts examination marks
• (D) Social justice planning, because it compensates disadvantaged groups to widen access

Q25. A weakness of planning by social demand alone is that popular courses may expand even when:

• (A) Applications for them are falling
• (B) Teachers for them are plentiful
• (C) Graduates from them face unemployment, because demand for places does not equal demand for workers
• (D) Parents support the expansion

Q26. Manpower forecasting is most useful for planning which part of the education system?

• (A) Technical, vocational and professional education, where training links closely to occupations
• (B) Primary schooling for young children, where job forecasts are less direct
• (C) Adult literacy for its own sake, where no occupation is involved
• (D) School sports programmes, where employment is not the aim

Q27. Cost-benefit analysis is hardest to apply to early childhood education because:

• (A) Early childhood benefits appear only after many years, so they must be discounted over a long horizon
• (B) Early childhood costs vary widely between providers, making unit costs hard to compare
• (C) Early childhood outcomes depend on family background as well as schooling, making attribution difficult
• (D) Many of its benefits, such as social development and learning readiness, are difficult to express in money terms

Q28. A planner studies dropout among girls in rural areas and proposes separate toilets, female teachers and safe transport. The approach guiding this proposal is best described as social justice planning because it:

• (A) Counts how many girls apply for admission
• (B) Identifies a disadvantaged group and removes the specific barriers it faces
• (C) Forecasts how many nurses will be needed in ten years
• (D) Compares the salaries of male and female teachers

Q29. A committee is asked which approach it used when it expanded arts degrees because students wanted them, even though arts graduates struggled to find jobs. The honest answer is:

• (A) Manpower forecasting, because it predicted arts jobs
• (B) Cost-benefit analysis, because it measured arts earnings
• (C) Social demand, because expansion followed student demand rather than employment prospects
• (D) Social justice planning, because it helped remote districts

Q30. Good educational planning usually draws on more than one approach because:

• (A) Each approach answers a different question: what people want, what workers are needed, what is affordable, and what is fair
• (B) Using several approaches guarantees that forecasts will be exact
• (C) A single approach is forbidden by law in most countries
• (D) Committees prefer longer reports to shorter ones

Q31. Before writing a new district plan, officers visit schools, check enrolment registers and interview headteachers about shortages. This stage is:

• (A) Implementation, because schools are being visited
• (B) Evaluation, because results are being judged
• (C) Goal setting, because targets are being announced
• (D) Diagnosis, because the present situation is being studied before targets are set

Q32. A province declares that every child aged five will be enrolled in primary school by 2030. This declaration functions in the planning process as:

• (A) A diagnosis of present enrolment
• (B) A goal, because it states the future outcome the plan aims to achieve
• (C) An evaluation of a past programme
• (D) Feedback from teachers

Q33. To raise girls’ enrolment, planners compare building girls’ schools, providing transport, and offering stipends, judging each option by cost, speed and likely enrolment gain. This stage is:

• (A) Implementation, because schools are being built
• (B) Evaluation, because a finished programme is being judged
• (C) Considering alternatives, because options are compared before one is chosen
• (D) Diagnosis, because the problem is first being discovered

Q34. After the plan is approved, the province releases funds, recruits teachers and opens the new girls’ schools. This stage is best called:

• (A) Implementation, because the approved plan is being carried out in practice
• (B) Diagnosis, because data are being collected
• (C) Goal setting, because targets are being written
• (D) Feedback, because results are being reported

Q35. Two years later, officers find enrolment rose by 12 percent against a target of 20 percent, and they examine which districts fell short and why. This is:

• (A) Diagnosis of a brand-new problem unrelated to the plan
• (B) Evaluation, because actual progress is being measured against the target and its causes examined
• (C) Implementation, because more schools are opening
• (D) Goal setting, because a new target is being announced

Q36. Because evaluation showed transport worked better than stipends in remote areas, the next plan gives transport a larger share of the budget. This is an example of:

• (A) Diagnosis, because a new survey is ordered
• (B) Goal setting, because the enrolment target is raised
• (C) Implementation, because funds are spent
• (D) Feedback, because evaluation findings change the next round of planning

Q37. Which order of planning steps is correct?

• (A) Implementation, evaluation, diagnosis, feedback, goal setting
• (B) Goal setting, diagnosis, implementation, evaluation, feedback
• (C) Diagnosis, goal setting, alternatives, implementation, evaluation, feedback
• (D) Evaluation, feedback, diagnosis, goal setting, implementation

Q38. A plan that promises 500 new classrooms but never says how much each will cost or where the money will come from is weakest in:

• (A) Resource estimation, because the financial and material means are not worked out
• (B) Diagnosis, because enrolment data are missing
• (C) Evaluation, because results are not yet known
• (D) Feedback, because no corrections have been made

Q39. During implementation, a district discovers that trained science teachers are unavailable, so it starts in-service training for existing teachers and staggers laboratory openings. This response shows that effective implementation needs:

• (A) Abandoning the plan as soon as a shortage appears
• (B) Ignoring the shortage until the evaluation stage
• (C) Following the original timetable regardless of staffing
• (D) Monitoring, problem-solving and adjustment while the plan is running

Q40. A goal that says “enrol 90 percent of out-of-school children in the district within two years” is stronger than a goal that says “improve enrolment” mainly because it is:

• (A) Longer and more impressive in wording
• (B) Specific and measurable, so progress can be checked at evaluation
• (C) Approved by more officers
• (D) Focused on urban schools only

Q41. Which activity belongs to evaluation rather than to diagnosis?

• (A) Surveying out-of-school children before a plan is written
• (B) Counting teacher vacancies before targets are set
• (C) Comparing final enrolment figures with the targets the plan set, after implementation
• (D) Listing possible ways to reduce dropout before choosing one

Q42. When planners choose the cheapest option without checking whether it will actually raise enrolment, they have weakened which stage?

• (A) Considering alternatives, because options should be judged on effectiveness as well as cost
• (B) Diagnosis, because data were collected
• (C) Implementation, because funds were released
• (D) Feedback, because results were reported

Q43. A school reviews its development plan each term, checking attendance and learning data and revising next term’s actions. This best illustrates planning as:

• (A) A document written once and filed away
• (B) A task for senior officers only
• (C) A substitute for classroom supervision
• (D) A continuing cycle of action, review and revision

Q44. A plan fails because the officers responsible for teacher training assumed the finance department would release funds, while finance assumed training would wait. The implementation problem here is mainly:

• (A) A vague national goal
• (B) Poor coordination and unclear responsibilities between departments
• (C) Too much evaluation during the year
• (D) Excessive consultation with parents

Q45. Feedback is most valuable when it is:

• (A) Kept in a report that no planner reads
• (B) Delivered after the next plan has already been finalized
• (C) Used to revise goals, methods and budgets in the next planning cycle
• (D) Limited to praise for what went well

Q46. A district has no officers trained in data analysis or forecasting, so its plans are copied from other districts without local figures. The barrier here is mainly:

• (A) Shortage of trained planning personnel, which leaves plans without local evidence
• (B) Resistance from pupils to new subjects
• (C) Over-funding of school buildings
• (D) Excessive flexibility in timelines

Q47. A well-prepared school plan is shelved because a senior officer prefers a different project that brings more publicity. This barrier is best described as:

• (A) Lack of reliable statistics
• (B) Teacher resistance to change
• (C) Shortage of classroom furniture
• (D) Political interference, where personal or political preference overrides planned priorities

Q48. Headteachers ignore a new district plan because it was prepared centrally without asking schools about their staffing and building realities. The barrier illustrated is:

• (A) Financial shortage for textbooks
• (B) Lack of participation, which produces plans that schools do not own or trust
• (C) Over-centralization of examinations
• (D) Inadequate evaluation methods

Q49. A plan sets a target of building 200 schools in a year, although the construction budget covers only 40. The plan is best criticized as:

• (A) Too participatory
• (B) Too flexible
• (C) Unrealistic, because it promises far more than resources allow
• (D) Too focused on rural areas

Q50. Which of the following is a mark of a good educational plan?

• (A) It is based on reliable data about needs, resources and trends
• (B) It avoids setting any targets so that failure is impossible
• (C) It is kept secret from the schools that must implement it
• (D) It covers only one part of the system in isolation

Q51. A good plan allows a district to delay a building project when floods damage existing schools, while keeping its enrolment goal unchanged. This quality is:

• (A) Rigidity, because nothing changes
• (B) Flexibility, because methods and timing adapt while the goal remains
• (C) Secrecy, because the change is not announced
• (D) Centralization, because the district decides alone

Q52. A plan that covers enrolment, teacher supply, textbooks, buildings and supervision together, rather than enrolment alone, is stronger because it is:

• (A) Shorter and easier to print
• (B) Cheaper to prepare
• (C) Written by fewer officers
• (D) Comprehensive, covering all the parts on which success depends

Q53. A plan states its objectives in plain language, with each task assigned to a named officer and a deadline. This strength is mainly:

• (A) Clarity, because everyone involved can understand what is expected and who is responsible
• (B) Continuity, because it lasts for decades
• (C) Centralization, because one office wrote it
• (D) Flexibility, because deadlines can be ignored

Q54. A province sustains its literacy programme through three changes of government, improving it each year from evaluation data. This illustrates:

• (A) Rigidity, because the programme never ends
• (B) Secrecy, because the public is uninformed
• (C) Continuity, because the programme is maintained over time and improved through feedback
• (D) Over-centralization, because the province controls it

Q55. A plan fails because enrolment figures used in it were five years old and did not reflect recent migration into towns. The barrier is:

• (A) Teacher resistance to new methods
• (B) Political interference in appointments
• (C) Excessive participation by parents
• (D) Outdated and unreliable data, which make targets and resource estimates wrong

Q56. A district plan is prepared by officers alone, and teachers later say they were never told what was expected of them. The most likely result during implementation is:

• (A) Faster implementation, because fewer people were involved
• (B) Weak ownership and confusion, because implementers were not part of planning or communication
• (C) Lower costs, because no meetings were held
• (D) Better evaluation, because targets were kept secret

Q57. A good plan for expanding secondary schooling sets a ten-year goal, yearly enrolment targets, and an annual review of progress. This combination best shows:

• (A) Clear objectives joined to continuity and regular evaluation
• (B) Rigidity joined to secrecy
• (C) Centralization joined to local freedom
• (D) Flexibility joined to vague targets

Q58. The education department plans new schools, but the finance department plans a budget cut in the same year and the training institutions plan no new teacher output. The plan is most likely to fail because of:

• (A) Too much data on enrolment
• (B) Too frequent evaluation
• (C) Lack of coordination between departments whose plans affect each other
• (D) Too much flexibility in school timings

Q59. Which of the following best describes a plan that is both realistic and comprehensive?

• (A) A plan with ambitious targets and no cost estimates
• (B) A plan covering one school subject in great detail
• (C) A plan written quickly to meet a deadline
• (D) A plan whose targets match available resources and which covers staffing, materials, buildings and supervision together

Q60. In summary, effective educational planning is best understood as:

• (A) A one-time document that fixes all future decisions
• (B) A continuous, participatory process based on reliable data, with clear goals, realistic resources, and review through evaluation and feedback
• (C) A set of orders issued by the central office each year
• (D) A statistical forecast with no decisions attached to it