This paper describes the objectives of the research undertaken by the International Institute for Educational Planning and the model adopted for defining training needs for administrators in national departments of education. From the conceptual point of view, this model comprises three successive and complementary phases. The phases are the definition of the principal factors underlying the disparity between the actual development of education and the avowed aims of educational policy; the formulation of a series of internal reforms compatible with the major constraints and designed to make planning more coherent and effective and the administrative system more fuctional and better suited to changes in the nature of its tasks; and the definition, where high posts are concerned, of training programs designed to facilitate and initiate some of the reforms mentioned above. The appendix contains a scheme developed on the basis of the theoretical and conceptual assumptions presented in the body of the paper. The objective of the scheme is to give some guidelines for how training information could be collected. The methodological procedure is divided into six phases--initiation, first analysis, planning, data collection, second analysis, and recommendation. (Author/IRT)