Prioritization of indices of Non-Profit Schools Grading National Plan : the comparison of Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Analytic Network Process (ANP)

The importance of education (and pedagogy) has been a meeting point for many Islamic and scientific texts. Authorities need to understand the current situation of schools and evaluate them for decision-making, accountability and improving the performance of schools (and in general the organizations, programs, policies, etc.). Non-Profit Schools Grading National Plan which implemented by the former Department of Public Participation of the Ministry of Education (the current Non-Governmental Schools and the Expansion of Public Participation Organization) is one of the few programs that has to have the courage to design local indicators to evaluate schools. To evaluate anything, standards, criteria and indices are required. When the indices and measures are designed, priority of them and the extent to which they affect the priority of an option should be identified. One way to prioritize in the field of decision making is using AHP and ANP, both of which are based on expert opinion. In this research the methods have been used for 12 index derived from 103 indices of Non-Profit Schools Grading National Plan, and also for 4 main indices of the Project and besides the differences of the results of these twomethods have been identified.

Keywords:

Non-Profit Schools Grading National Plan , Evaluation , Index Prioritization , Schools Rating , the Islamic Republic of Iran Ministry of Education