Changes in the management of education can increase the efficiency of educational systems, freeing resources that can be used to increase the availability of education, according to this book. The reader's attention is first drawn to the worldwide crisis facing education--while the demand for education continues to increase, budgets are reaching their practical limits and population is growing more rapidly than educational capacity. The situation seems to call for more efficient management of educational resources. The author notes that efficiency is not the same as effectiveness--that the former is a measure of the performance of a process within a system, while the latter is a measure of the degree to which the system's products are related to its objectives. Accepting this definition of efficiency, this document concentrates on an examination of the application of systems theory to concepts of management in general, to public administration, and, still more specifically, to educational administration. Within the framework of systems theory, the author characterizes schools as open systems and identifies the main management problems confronting education throughout the world. Appendices present both supporting statistics concerning worldwide education and related documentary material developed by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. (PGD)