During the last few decades, the countries in the Asian region, have had wide-ranging experiences and involvement in the development of the educational planning process .The countries of this region have accelerated their initiatives towards capacity development programmes in educational planning and management for translating their commitment to achieve Education For All and to build a well- planned National System of Education. One of the core activities of the ANTRIEP member institutions is capacity development in educational planning and management. The member institutions were requested to contribute articles on Capacity Development in Educational Planning and Management for Achieving Education For All based on their country-specific wide-ranging experiences, challenges and future directions. It’s heartening to share with you that the response from member institutions was overwhelming. In this issue, we have included articles from IIEP (Paris), AKU (Pakistan), CERID (Nepal), KEDI (South Korea), SIEMAT, UP (India).

Recognizing the fundamental necessity of capacity development programmes to achieve Education for All (EFA), the article from IIEP, Paris, presents an analysis of the key findings of the wide range of studies of an IIEP coordinated programme. The paper presents an operational definition of the capacity development programme and emphasizes the significance of capacity development at all levels-individual, institutional and public management. The article also establishes the need to develop existing capacity and focuses on the role of the state and effective public institutions. The article recognizes that capacity development is a long-term change process. Expressing concerns over the impact of external assistance on capacity development, the article further suggests strengthening of expertise of international agencies for designing and implementing more successful capacity development programmes. On the whole the paper basically establishes the fact that without capacity there is no development.