The educational system as a system.

Superficially the education system has many of the key elements of a manufacturing organization: a product, tolerance limits for the product, methods for assessing product deviation, and a feedback system for making compensatory adjustments. These elements are: educated youth, educational goals or objectives, performance tests, and a reporting system. Their existence has led some 'managers' to attempt a wholesale application of the systems framework to education. This paper analyses some of the reasons for the comparative lack of success of such attempts. It is shown that rather than modeling the total system (which, because of its open loop characteristics, is probably an impossible task of limited usefulness), systems analysts should focus on those aspects of education which can be systematized. Such aspects are: resource allocation, scheduling, prediction systems (research and evaluation), and data-bank systems. It is considered that successful education system models require that: (1) the designers recognize that schools are political entities, and (2) the system must be focussed at the level of the individual student. The implications of these assumptions are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]