The aims of the FREPD are to promote, sponsor, organize, develop and assist research efforts on problems and factors impinging on the planning of the quantitative and qualitative growth of education as an integral part of the over-all national development. The principal aim of the Foundation is to provide an institutional frame within which such research may be undertaken and pursued with academic objectivity and freedom, unhampered by the pressures under which agencies directly concerned with development are often required to work. The Foundation will, however, cooperate in every possible way with the government and other national and international agencies involved in development, and make the findings of research undertaken under its aegis available to all such agencies. On request, the Foundation will also assist them in carrying out pre-investment studies, developing pilot projects and evaluating plan/project performance.
In selecting research projects, the Foundation will pay special attention to the critical areas of development education with the focus on the central problem of the symbiosis of economic and educational growth to develop and harness the human capital for productive use. The research programme will also include studies on related problems, such as, changes in the educational system/sub-system to link them meaningfully and effectively with the world of work. The role of non-formal recurrent education in social and economic transformation, designing technological education to fit the changing needs of an economy in transition, special needs of the rural areas, incentives to employment oriented education including possible changes in the employment and wages structure, institutional arrangement conducive to planning and development of education and resource management at the local levels, cost-effectiveness and cost-benefit relations in education with the concept of cost and benefit expanded to include also their non-monetary aspects, raising the internal efficiency and reducing ‘wastage’ in educational systems, and the like will naturally be treated as high priority areas.
The services of the FREPD are also available to individual educational institutions and organizations in designing and implementing plans for their development.
Besides research, the functions of the FREPD include holding of seminars, workshops, discussion meetings and bringing out working papers, journals, reports and other publications to disseminate the findings of research, innovations and creative experiments in education.
Training programmes on research methodology, data collection and processing for university graduates also constitute an activity of the FREPD.