Planning and Managment in Asia and the Pacific. AVAILABLE FROM United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural

Asia and the Pacific region is a vast area with a great variety of countries and territories in terms of economic development, political ideology, and cultural heritage. Education in the region is diverse both in terms of structure and policies, and of educational thoughts and practices in schools. The entire region has made considerable progress in the past decades. That even the rural South Asian countries saw encouraging economic growth indicates favorable soil for educational development. Reform has been the main theme in education in the region. Despite the diverse objectives in the reforms, commonalities do emerge. There is a general tendency to decentralize the administration and finance of education, and to create new sources of finance. In terms of educational planning, human resources development has become the central concern, either explicitly or implicitly. On one hand, there is movement towar