ABSTRACT
Policy-making in education tends to be based on untested value judgments. Educational planning is in the nature of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Small wonder, then, that management by objectives has as yet made little inroad into the practices of the education service. To the self-fulfilling prophecy we must, in education, add the public service tradition. Education officers are often preoccupied with institutional management. School hours and holidays make more sense as arrangements convenient to teachers than as a framework to teaching children. The method known as a planning-programming-budgeting system seeks not only to associate the two processes but to initiate thinking about fundamentals. One particular complication for education services relates to the difference between the budget year, usually 1 April to 31 March, and the academic year, say 1 September to 31 August.
