This article reports the use of a Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) technique as a means of exploring our understanding of the leadership of Heads of Subject Departments within School Based Management (SBM) secondary schools in Hong Kong. Arguments made by Gronn (1999, 2000), Spillane et al. (2001) suggest that studies of leadership need to focus more on a distributed model rather than seeing leadership as residing solely in the titular head of the organisation. Other recent studies (Busher & Harris 1999; Harris 2001) have examined the role of middle managers. This article explores SEM as a means of offering important measurement and insight in this complex area. The structural models generated and presented support a new integrative model of the leadership activities and behaviours of the HODs within SBM secondary schools in Hong Kong. Some initial findings (Au 2003) are reported based on a return rate of 83% from a dataset of 2739 teachers, HODs, school principals and vice- principals taken from a sample of 110 government and non-government SBM secondary schools in Hong Kong.
[Copyright of School Leadership & Management is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1363243032000150999]

This article provides a brief overview of the Hong Kong system of higher education and the roles of the government, the Education Commission, the University Grants Committee, and the Hong Kong Council for Academic Accreditation in relation to the planning, development, funding, and quality assurance of higher education in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR). It then describes the extent to which transnational education (i.e., non-local education delivered in Hong Kong) plays a role in meeting the demand for higher and continuing education in Hong Kong and recent measures taken by the HKSAR government aimed at assuring the quality of such offshore provision. It concludes with some comments as to how transnational education may be expected to contribute towards meeting the demand for higher and continuing education in Hong Kong in the future.
[Copyright of Higher Education in Europe is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0379772990240208]

Beginning in 1995, the Hong Kong University Grants Committee (UGC) embarked on a programme of Teaching and Learning Quality Process Reviews (TLQPRs) to gauge institutional commitment to assuring and improving educational quality. While rooted in academic audit principles, the reviews covered more aspects of education quality work than was typical in earlier audit implementations elsewhere. The paper describes the dynamics of the TLQPR process, presents examples of good and bad practices unearthed during the site visits, and reports on an external consultant's ex-post review of the exercise. It concludes by discussing lessons learned from the TLQPR experience and the way forward toward a second round of reviews.
[Copyright of Quality in Higher Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13538320120045067]

This article discusses the sources, processes and impact of the quality assurance policy implemented in Hong Kong preschools. Regarded as a sort of policy alignment between the subsystems of pre-primary, primary and secondary education, the introduction of a quality assurance policy has been directly and indirectly transforming the settlements in the preschool context. The first section of this article examines the main shift in policy direction shaped by the global movement of supranational organizations and the local agenda of educational reform after 1997. The historical review of the changing parameters in the preschool field is provided in the second section as a backdrop for later discussion. The third section analyses how the local governance of education is subtly transforming the settlements in the preschool field. The fourth section discusses how the quality assurance policy is mediated with school-level realities. It is argued that the top-down approach adopted by policy-makers should be critically re-examined in the policy process in order to ensure the quality of preschool education.
[Copyright of Early Child Development and Care is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03004430600563836]

Governments around the world have adopted school self-evaluation as an essential corollary to the local management of schools. Typically this has been accompanied by prescribed frameworks, indicators and scoring systems, tending to promote a form of ritual self-inspection rather than an ongoing and dynamic process of self-evaluation. It is argued that these have derived more from an accountability imperative than an improvement motive and as such have tended to disempower rather than empower schools. This article examines the inherent tensions between external accountability and internally driven school improvement. The example of Hong Kong's new relationship with schools is used to illustrate how those issues play out in the implementation of large-scale reform, drawing parallels and contrasts with Ofsted's New Relationship with Schools in England. The responsiveness of Hong Kong's Education Development Bureau to evidence from independent research carries lessons for other countries in which such evidence has been ignored or marginalised by policy-makers. It is, in many respects, an exemplary case study of change management.
[Copyright of School Leadership & Management is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13632430802292332]