This manual endorses and adopts the sector-assessment approach for planning and managing the allocation of educational resources. Chapter 1 presents the manual's goals. Chapter 2 describes the manual's content and information sources, explains the term "sector assessment," identifies the groups that benefit from recommendations made by the assessments, and presents a brief historical overview of the education sector-assessments. The third chapter describes the systems approach and explains its usefulness for education sector-assessments. The types of expected outcomes are described, as well as an overview of the sector-assessment process. Chapter 4 describes the elements of planning: scope of work, level of effort, personnel, management, logistics, costs, schedule, and institutional relationships. Chapter 5 discusses national goals and the specific education and training objectives derived from them. Different perspectives that have influenced the analysis of education systems are discussed in terms of national goals and objectives. The sixth chapter describes the policy context of educational activities and the nature of each subsector. The kinds and quality of data necessary to support the analysis are examined, and the analytic themes used to examine each subsector are discussed. Chapter 7 describes the writing style and format of the assessment report, and chapter 8 offers suggestions for its presentation and dissemination. The final chapter offers examples of positive effects of sector assessments on educational change in Somalia and Botswana. Thirty-three tables are included. (Contains 59 references.) (LMI)