There is every need to carryout the needs assessment by establishment of pupils and community needs through: already existing data and written materials, research and study of the administrative and supervisory staff, teacher preparation, student preparation, accreditation and self study reports, state required academic standards, boards of education, citizen task forces and the advisory committee reports, full and comprehensive community survey, single purpose survey, and also outside consultants. These points are discussed below:
(i) Existing Data and Written Materials: There are different sources of data retrieval to establish the needs of the pupils.
These data needed be collected, organised, arranged and even be presented in a clear format. Such sources include: the
129
school sources made up of the school official records, test scores of students, school drop-out statistics, follow-up studies and even the school research output publications report. Other information sources are non-school sources such as: the Department of Economic Planning and Research, records of the courts, police and security offices, chambers of commerce offices, and even independent consulting firms.
(ii) Research and Study by Administrative and Supervisory Staff: In schools, we have both the administrative and supervisory staff that an be saddled with assessing the needs of both the pupils and the community on a regular basis.
They are expected to always make available needed statistics so as to be able to establish the trends of happenings, point to the changes that are necessary, assists in both the optimal budgeting and rational allocation of resources, and further realistically support new requests for resources.
(iii) Teacher Participation: Okure (1997) noted that the participation and contributions of teachers are essential to the needs assessment process. So, teachers of different ages and experiences and from varying disciplines must be involved and fully participate in the assessment process.
(iv) Student Participation: Remember that students too are products of the community and can also reason and discover what their needs are. Towards this end, students of whatever level should be allowed to meaningfully contribute to determining what their needs are and in summary be involved in all the stages of needs assessment.
130
(v) Accreditation and Self-Reports: Accreditation of programmes is very important in order to make the organizers to be on their toes. However, accreditation helps in showing both the strong and weak areas of a programme so as to discover the different steps that can be taken to provide remediation to problem areas. Accreditation exercises should be ceased as opportunity of finding out areas of both school and pupils needs and also help to determine targeted school improvement. Okure (1997) further said that accreditation should help a school to (i) identify its common needs throughout the school system (ii) identify the composition of the community that the school is serving (iii) pinpoint out the needs that are unique to a single school (iv) determine the need for different types of personnel (v) determine broad goals of the school.
(vi) Government Required Academic Standards: The government of the different countries have their required academic standards stated in government documents such as gazettees policies or even in the constitution. These standards are expected to be met by the schools, so that the well-being of the pupils and the community will be improved.
Such government required and stated academic standards should serve as point of reference for schools to determine and assess their needs, in order to ensure the meeting of such pupil needs.
(vii) Board of Education: This is a board saddled with the responsibility of overseeing what is happening with the units of education. The board can be at the local or state or federal
131
levels and must be highly involved in the process of determination of need assessment. The board is expected to identify, react, modify, profer likely solution and thereby improve the level of need assessment of the pupils and their community.
(viii) Citizen Task Forces and Advisory Committee Reports:
The citizens also have their responsibility of determining the need areas of themselves and the students, and even the community in which they are living. Giving the opportunity, the citizens should constitute task forces and advisory committees on pupils and community need assessment areas.
The citizen can determine what recreational items needed by them to make life more worthwhile.
(ix) Comprehensive Community Survey: This has to do with all round survey or discovery of the community needed or available resources. The community can set up a committee to look at this in order to find out what are the pressing needs of the community. While the survey is being conducted, different areas such as economic, cultural, agricultural, vocational, health, recreational areas are assessed to be able to find out critical areas of needs of the communities.
(x) Single Purpose Survey: The single purpose survey may be short, and targeted at obtaining unique information. For example, it may want to find out the needs of the specially created people within the community, and the result of such findings made available to the public.
(xi) Outside Consultants: In cases where there are no experts to carryout the consulting job, outside consultants can be
132
employed to help in finding out the needs of the pupils and the community as a whole. The consultants are expected to conduct survey round the schools and the community as a whole so as to find out the various areas of needs and there by provide necessary suggestion targeted at meeting such needs. Note however that these consultants can be those that are independently into the consulting job or those that are from either the universities, or world known bodies (or organisations) such as the UNESCO, USAID, World Bank, e.t.c.