Transforming Hong Kong’s schools: trends and emerging issues
| Date | 01 December 1998 |
| Published date | 01 December 1998 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/09578239810238465 |
| Pages | 476-491 |
| Author | Clive Dimmock,Allan Walker |
| Subject Matter | Education |
Journal of
Educational
Administration
36,5
476
Transforming Hong Kong’s
schools: trends and emerging
issues
Clive Dimmock
Associate Professor, The Chinese University of Hong Kong and The
University of Western Australia
Allan Walker
Associate Professor, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
As a vibrant and dynamic territory, Hong Kong has experienced continuous
social, political and economic change particularly over the last 40 years. Its
geographical position, the adaptability and industriousness of the Chinese, their
ability to seize new opportunities, and a reliable and stable banking and legal
system underpinning the social and economic fabric, are some of the
acknowledged reasons for its phenomenal success. Indeed, few other societies
can claim to have rivalled the momentum of change which has characterised
Hong Kong during this period. At the same time, momentous change in the
social, political and economic fabric of Hong Kong has periodically brought into
focus the need to reform education.
Although the connections between education and the socio-political-
economic environment are complex, the issue of school reform is best
understood within this broad context of change. Elsewhere, we have discussed
the policy background to educational reform in Hong Kong (Walker and
Dimmock, 1998). The aims of this paper are, first, to outline the major policy
reforms of the 1990s – reforms which are likely to determine the direction of
Hong Kong’s education system well into the next century; second, to review
currently available evidence on the effects of the reforms; and finally, to draw
inferences from the reforms in regard to their likely future success and to
highlight key implications and emerging issues. Reforms affecting both school
management and curriculum have been included in the paper, since the authors
see them as inextricably linked.
Major policy reforms of the 1990s
Since the beginning of the 1990s, Hong Kong has experienced similar pressures
for school restructuring as many English-speaking Western countries. Policy
Journal of Educational
Administration,
Vol. 36 No. 5, 1998, pp. 476-491,
© MCBUniversity Press, 0957-8234
The authors wish to express their appreciation to the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK)
for supporting this research through a direct grant and the Hong Kong Institute of Education
(HKIER) for its support of the project.
Transforming
Hong Kong’s
schools
477
initiatives have been introduced which bear close similarity to those of other
systems, notably England and Wales, Australia and the USA. This is not
surprising since Hong Kong’s policy makers looked to these countries for the
blueprints on which to base school management reform. The School
Management Initiative (SMI), for example, is largely derived from an exported
model of school restructuring from Australia. Although school and curricula
reforms in Hong Kong have been commonplace since the 1970s, the reform
agenda of the 1990s, as in other systems, represents a wholesale and
comprehensive effort to restructure. It therefore merits exclusive attention.
The current wave of restructuring centres on three major policy initiatives.
These are: the School Management Initiative (SMI) (Education and Manpower
Branch and Education Department, 1991); the target-oriented curriculum (TOC)
(Education Department, 1994); and Quality School Education (QSE), best
known as ECR7, or Education Commission Report No. 7 (Education
Commission, 1997). In common with the restructuring of school systems
elsewhere, these initiatives can be conceived as two-pronged, one aimed at
reforming the administrative, managerial and governmental aspects of schools,
the other targeting curriculum, teaching, learning and assessment. The two
dimensions of this policy agenda tend to be treated as discrete rather than as
inter-related. In common, too, with reform initiatives elsewhere, policy
documents representing both administrative and curriculum reforms reflect
subtle shifts in emphasis over time. The SMI, for example, was driven by the
notion of school effectiveness, while ECR7, which up-dated and largely replaced
SMI, is firmly underpinned by the concept of quality culture and education. The
administrative and managerial aspects of Hong Kong’s restructuring of its
school system are enshrined in the SMI and ECR7, while curriculum reform is
represented by the TOC. Before describing each of the three reforms below, it is
worth noting that other reforms have also been introduced, as a consequence of
Hong Kong’s return to Chinese sovereignty, such as changes to subject
syllabuses and to the language used as the medium of instruction in secondary
schools (for a discussion of these, see Dimmock and Walker, 1997, and Walker
and Dimmock, 1998).
The school management initiative
After several decades of education policy focused on quantitative and logistical
concerns, focused on coping with student numbers, the Hong Kong
Government, in 1991, turned its attention to improving the quality of education,
a theme which has dominated policy for most of the final decade of the
twentieth century, not only in Hong Kong, but throughout many Western and
Asian countries. In its policy document, the School Management Initiative
(SMI), the Hong Kong Government (Education and Manpower Branch and
Education Department, 1991) (EMB&ED), set out the background prompting,
and the proposals for, the reform of the school system.
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