Analytical Support for Decision-Making - Essay Example

ANALYTICAL SUPPORT FOR DECISION MAKING By + Introduction The need for one to make a decision stems from the fact that there is a sort of inconsistency between the set goals and the actual performance thereof. For this reason one has to find a new way to better the performance of the existing goals (Kreowski, Reiter and Thoben, 2011). There is no better way of doing this than employing analytical thinking as a means of solving the problem. Such a system is employed by the Word Bank which collects information from many sources on a number of issues affecting development in different countries all over the world. This information which has been continuously collected since 1960 contains information on global development that is both accurate and up-to-date. Most governments across the globe rely on this information as a way of comparing the progress in their country with others. Careful analysis of this data helps governments and institutions realize their weak points and areas that need further improvements. Relying on the information provided by the World Bank, one can easily compare the issues that are faced by the Education ministry in Brazil and those of its neighbors. From this information, one can find solutions or plan how to avoid future mistakes. Brazil is arguably the outstanding economy in its region which is Latin America and the 5th largest country in the whole world in population and land. The country stands out to be having vast natural resources as well as human capital. The exploration of these minerals has boosted substation economic growth in the recent years although it lagged behind in human development. a child in Brazil likely attend both primary as well as secondary school, thereafter suffers from dropouts which is high and grade repetition Brazil has one major problem when it comes to school going children. Many children drop out of school at different ages as they progress through the system. It is estimated that less than 50% of children who are in the less financially fortunate lower 40% of earning levels hardly go beyond the first grade. This therefore stands to reason that an individual in this country can benefit very highly from an additional year of school. This is because, in a place where the schooling levels are low, an individual is more likely to earn a much higher salary as compared to an individual who is in a country that has high schooling levels. The situation is however slightly different in Africa. Here, an individual’s income goes up by roughly 30% with every advancement in secondary or tertiary education. In first world countries, the same scenario would only account for 12% increase in an individual’s income (Inter-American Development Bank, 1998). One admirable solution that Brazil has used to solve the poor people’s access to education is the use of television. This educational television has taken Brazil a long way in providing secondary education to students who otherwise would not have had it. Despite the high initial cost incurred, this program has largely increased the population’s access to secondary education. This directly affects the economies of scale (World Bank, 2007). Taking an example of Peru which is one of the Latin American country and compare it to Brazil, it shows different scenario in education system although some aspect are similar. In Peru the system of education is free for all that is primary and secondary while country experience inaccessibility when it comes to rural dwellers. At secondary level schools have 5 grades which make it hard for children to adapt since most of them are used to single teacher especially those coming from up country, this is almost similar with Brazil where teachers are rare in classroom. Each economy has its own set of challenges when it comes to education systems. Stake holders in the sector, particularly educators and policy makers, need to change their approach to teaching. One major thing is they should put the needs of each individual student as the epitome of policies regarding education for the sake of a knowledgeable economy. In many cases policies related to education tend to be sartorial. This means that various sectors of education compete for the meager public resources available in growing economies. This in principle makes it difficult for the government to efficiently distribute public resources within the education sector. A solution to this is having a strong political commitment to a long and strong consideration to the demand and supply of learning equipment and opportunities. Chief among these is to link the labor market with the education policies to make sure that there is ready market of jobs for students when they graduate from school. Some of the economic as well as social variables that affect education in Brazil are said to be systematic in nature, for instance waste of time which have been used at class, a good number of teachers many times are absent from work, student ability to concentrate to class is high plus absenteeism and poor managements. In order for the country to grow uniformly economically, there must be good investment in the sector by the government since Brazil has one of the highest demographic windows of so many opportunities. To have a healthy workforce that is educated then is the responsibility of the policy makers to invest more in the educational sector. Latin America region suffers from ineffiencies when it come to education which in return undermine education. Singapore has certain aspects that helped the sector of education, some of the policies that greatly improved and encouraged learning in schools was the employment of marketization initiatives. These followed three autonomous schemes namely the independent schools, school clusters and autonomous schools. Another great idea came with the aggressive inter-schools competitions. These worked by annually ranking the school league tables and quality institution awards. These initiatives improved educational standards by promoting choice and diversity among the students. Similar to its neighbors, Singapore has greatly expanded its education sector in the last decade. A larger chunk of public expenditure is targeted towards the development of higher education. The government is however the highest contributor towards this endeavor. Between the year 1997 to 2001, the government tripled its expenditure towards universities. For polytechnics however, the government increased its expenditure to six times the amount within the same time span. All this has happened despite that Singapore was greatly affected by the economic recession of 1997-98. This however comes with very stringent rules when it comes to managing and preventing wastage of these resources. This problem was experienced in various other countries. This repackaging education within a globalization manner has gone a long way in giving the government additional political strength to push for reforms in Singapore’s local public segment (Mok and Tan, 2004). If this trend of additional, well accounted for funding can be adopted by Brazil, it would go a long way to improving education in the country. The World Bank released policy research paper titled “Absenteeism and beyond: Instrumental Time Loss and Consequences” why was written by Helen Abadzi in 2007 takes proper analysis systematically highlighting the problems in education systems in a number of countries Brazil included, according to her findings, the trend found in developing countries is that teachers are always absent from the class most of the time and don’t utilize time properly and this have some social ramifications that in the long run undermines economic growth furthermore, Helen Abadzi in her paper explore the policy implication that supports innovative teaching pedagogies together with recommendations which aims at reducing the rate of absenteeism. In the same year again another policy research paper was released by World Bank, two gently men were behind it, namely Eric Hanushek together with Ludger which talks about the relationship between education qualities in relation to economic growth. According to then, their analysis and policies aimed at changing entire education system that exists in developing countries so that that can have sound economic returns. These authors suggest that long term reforms are necessary in education sector in order to increase GDP contrary to those economies that ignore changes. Therefore, research indicates that quality of education has more influence on economic growth than simply increasing the quality of available schooling. The paper further suggests several wide policy initiatives which if applied can help learners acquire cognitive skills which increase teaching quality. Alarming statistics shows that severity of problems found in the Brazil education system is that about two-thirds of the total students appears to be functionally illiterate when it comes to the time of graduation and 60% more from those already in school rarely reach basic literacy level in terms of cognitive skills. From the earlier description in order for education to be with great return there must be a cognitive proficiencies establishment. It is astonishing that only 8% of students in Brazil are able to reach literacy whereby the level of literacy in adults above the age of 15 is 88.6% only, but surprisingly average literacy rate for the whole Latin American region is 97.3%, it has now been 22 years In total of failed policy which has created an environment of uneducated workers who are not of good use to the development of the country and the rest of Latin America, high dropout of students from class is a big issue that faces Brazil, this stands at 33% while the standard grade repetition rate stands at 12.4%.even though the general dropouts in Brazil is relatively low between 20% and 25%, about 21.9% do repeat grades in secondary schools. In secondary schools it seems that the repetition is more common compared to students in primary schools which has low rate of repetition. It is clear that, the ability of this students to command material presentation is very limited, these automatically leads to the whole systematic failure. Cardoso and Verner (2008) hypothesize that high number of teenage pregnancy has greatly led to the poor statistics that is experienced. they point out that in (p.1) during 2000, only teenage births was about 20% compared to the total birth of that year which was a big shift when compared to 9% of 1980 As Cunningham and Jacobsen (2008, p. 6) Point out, “family background has an impact on education attainment and grade repetition.” For girls in the families, they are being discouraged to dropout, therefore, to have high quality education can be achieved only when the proper policy are set right where the issue of repetition and dropout is totally cut down. More studies that was carried out shows that improper use of classroom time contributes to the reason why there is inadequate funding towards infrastructure development which in term affect the quality of education, the ever increasing absenteeism behaviors by teachers have resulted to devastating effects to the whole education system, for instance, decline and poor reading fluency among the students, high dropout rates due to explained causes and finally increase in grade repetition rates. Studies were conducted in Brazil around the state of Pernambuco (poverty stricken suburb) shows that the announced visits arranged to classroom illustrates 40% of the total teachers were reported missing in Sertaāo de San Francisco town. The research stills shows that even though the teachers are present they waste a lot of time charting among themselves instead of teaching or sometime abandon their post to go and teach somewhere else they feel like. This compounding absenteeism shows serious lack of oversight. 74% log books that are used to track teacher attendance stay unfilled by respective teachers in Pernambuco schools. The problem of teacher absenteeism remains will continue to be a challenge that needs reform. Evidence also continue to suggests that pedagogies which is commonly applied in Brazilian schools curriculum detract from retention where it often not able to bolster cognitive skills. Learners need both personal support as well as hands-on activities that will maximize growth in the area of cognitive skills, the inefficient methods used should be avoided because they undercut the possible good quality of education that can be achieved. Although schools around Pernambuco their size was relatively small containing an average of about 25 students, they were not able to receive the required individual attention, it was found out that the teacher addressed the whole class of about 70% and 90% at that particular time, besides that, hands on activities plus discussion between students that promotes good absorption of the learnt material were rarely used amounting to only 5% during class time, teachers wasted a lot of time organizing the class compared to conventional U.S. principles where teachers are supposed to use only 15% of the school day in planning, but teachers in Pernambuco spent 27.9% of the time allocated to classroom teaching to organize the class. This makes students to exploit the opportunity of the unstructured time to do other things that distract them, researchers found out that learners were most of the time off task and this amounted to about 21% of the total class time. With more efforts to expand education useful methodologies and proper practices must be put in place not to remain shallow. Even if the government continue to spend on this sector financially ad the above factors are not properly addressed to change the whole education sector it will be in vain High school dropout rates in Brazil happens to be originating from extreme poverty, according to the survey done by Cardoso and Verner (2006), conducted in Fortaleza area which is the northeastern Brazil and has about 402 favelas/slums documented to be one of the area with the highest rates ever recorded poverty in Brazil, the report shows that about 33% of students were unable to complete their schooling due to hunger. Education still remains to be a key tool against poverty, the study also examined the possible dynamics that can be used to earn inequality. Cunningham and Jacobsen (2008, p. 15) concluded by saying “policies that attempt to equalize earnings-related characteristics across the whole population, say guaranteeing Universal primary education and hopefully also secondary education may do more to equalize earnings.”Furthermore, better education attainment and it targets women often results into very higher returns, but it is fortunate that large number of women are now attending college education in the country this means that with high quality education there is possibilities of diminishing gender inequalities and at the same time break completely the circle of poverty especially in Brazilian slums, for instance, Ceará in Pernambuco as illustrated in Abadzi (2007), this area are characterized with low income which limits them to participate in many activities including reinforce cognitive skills, it’s so surprising that sometimes teachers regularly emphasizes on copying simply because it makes work easier for the teacher to command the whole classroom. Unfortunately, this behavior is very dangerous because students are not engaged and at the same time encouraged to retain what they have leant. Those teachers located in impoverished areas more often are undereducated and they try to avoid using those teaching material that they seem not to be conversant with or less command of. As Abadzi (p. 36) explains, “The stresses of large classes, unresponsive students, and insufficient knowledge to deliver demanding curricula may make teachers avoid the tasks that they consider tedious.” The three area the Minister identified may be considered measures if all aspect are taken and keenly implemented by the government, for instance sending students abroad to study on government funding is good idea but the risks also comes with it, because you cannot force students to come back home but if they do, it will be a very encouraging step to fast-track programmes of changing the whole sector of education. The second option proposed by the Minister of creating a programmes that are based on analytical skills in line with oversees institution is interesting because of its combination of different foreign professors and local but at the end of the day it will positive and negative result although it will be one of the way of retaining brain drain. The third option was to create a Center of Excellence basing on the analytical methods that will focus on the causes that are industrial based although this will face a challenge decision by this institution. Conclusion Brazil is a well established and the preeminent economy compared to others in Latin America and has been in the forefront to reap the benefits of her economic growth especially in the last decade according to statistics, however, indicators shows that, the growth might not be that robust in the coming future the way it appears, therefore is very imperative to start directing investment behaviors towards special programs that will correlated with the current demographic changes. Country’s falling dependency ratio will definitely translates into a vibrant growing working population that will boost and sustain the possible economic growth. Therefore, as the progression of opportunity continues to be projected to around 2025, it means the policy that exists should be changed rapidly. Education has the ability to generate economic growth with time but this relies on the quality of education provided in Brazil in long term which is not the case, the many failures experienced in the education sector need to be addressed with urgency. It is now evident that reforms are needed. For any success in the cash transfer models similar to Bolsa Escola Familia program gives some optimism, not only does the program cut down the number of students dropout but champions the social agenda too which has the mandate to alleviate any possible multidimensional causes related to poverty References ABADZI, HELEN (2007) “Absenteeism and Beyond: Instructional Time Loss and C Washington, DC: World Bank Policy Research Working Paper, No. 4376 Available at: page: http://go.worldbank.org/YTOZYABWK0. CARDOSO, ANA RUTE AND DORTE VERNER (2008) “Youth Risk-Taking Behavior in Brand Teenage Pregnancy”, Washington, DC: World Bank Policy Research No. 4548 (March); available at: http://go.worldbank.org/YSN7P4R5Z0. CUNNINGHAM, WENDY AND JOYCE P. JACOBSEN (2008) “Earnings Inequality Within and Across Gender, Racial, and Ethnic Groups in Four Latin American Countries”, Washington, DC: World Bank Policy Research Working Paper, No. 4591 (April), available at: http://go.worldbank.org/XPE7NK10S0. KREOWSKI, H.-J., SCHOLZ-REITER, B., & THOBEN, K.-D. (2011). Dynamics in Logistics Second International Conference, LDIC 2009, Bremen, Germany, August 2009, Proceedings. Berlin, Heidelberg, Springer -Verlag Berlin Heidelberg. http://public.eblib.com/choice/publicfullrecord.aspx?p=666634. INTER-AMERICAN DEVELOPMENT BANK. (1998). Economic and social progress in Latin America: 1998-1999 report. Washington, Inter-American Development Bank. WORLD BANK. (2007). Building knowledge economies: advanced strategies for development. Washington, D.C., World Bank. MOK, KA, AND JASON TAN. (2004) Globalization and Marketization in Education: A Comparative Analysis of Hong Kong and Singapore. Cheltenham [u.a.: Edward Elgar. UNITED NATIONS (UN) Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) (2002) “High Student Drop-Out Rates in Latin America”, Santiago, Chile: UN ECLAC, División de Desarrollo Social; available at: http://www.cepal.org/cgi- bin/getProd.asp?xml=/prensa/noticias/comunicados/2/11262/P11262.xml&xsl=/prens a/tpl-i/p6f.xsl&base=/dds/tpl/top-bottom.xslt. WORLD BANK (2011) World Development Indicators (Washington, DC: The World Bank); as posted on the World Bank website: http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/ (downloaded Read More