Purpose: This paper aims to report a case study of 93 parents’ attitude towards their involvement at various levels of school education in a special school. It also examines the relations between parents’ education backgrounds and different levels of parental involvement. Design/methodology/approach: This study adopted quantitative research approach. A questionnaire composed of 30 items under six scales was developed with reference to Ng’s (1999) six–level Model of Home-School Cooperation which was adopted to frame the study. Findings: The study indicates that parents’ inclined to be involved more outside the school including ‘two-way communication’, ‘supervision of children at home’ and ‘participation in parent organizations and activities’ than that inside the school such as ‘volunteering’, ‘providing advice on school policies’ and ‘participating in decision making’. Research limitations/implications: In spite of its small scale in a case-study special school, it does not aim at generalization but illuminate how parental involvement was carried out. Practical implications: The study carries the implications for school management and policy makers when promoting and implementing parental involvement in special schools. Originality/value: For the school personnel, a total and positive relationship could help enhance efficient and effective management of education. Second, more resources should be provided by the Education Bureau for special schools to educate parents and subsidize their involvement. Third, more training opportunities regarding knowledge and skills of parental involvement be provided for frontline teachers.
[Copyright © 2015 Emerald Group Publishing Limited.]

學校以公營還是私營為主，是世界性的長期爭論的問題。本文以近年出現的“新公共行政”、“市場為本的公共行政”及“企業化政府”等公共行政觀點為背景，考察香港政府直資學校制度的沿革和發展趨勢，探討與之相關的“教育公平”問題，指出半私營學校制度對保證教育公平、資源合理分配及市場競爭機制都有現實價值。
[Copyright © 2003廣東省社會科學界聯合會.]

In Hong Kong, there is an acute need to provide newly appointed principals with opportunities for continuous professional development so that they could face the impact of reforms and globalization on school development. The Education Bureau has commissioned the tertiary institutions to provide structured professional development courses to cater for the needs of aspiring, newly appointed and serving principals for leadership development. This paper aims to report on an exploratory qualitative study regarding the perception of 32 newly appointed principals from secondary schools on (a) their role as a new principal and (b) their needs and expectations on the school leadership development programme so that contents of existing development programmes could be improved to meet their needs. Findings demonstrated that the newly appointed principals expected to be equipped with the administrative skills of human resources management such as empowering middle leaders and handing underperforming staff; the practical technique of financial management; the skills of dealing with legal matters regarding school management and the capacities of curriculum and instructional leadership. In addition, they attributed networking with peers and working with mentors as invaluable experience and support for their early years’ principalship.
[Copyright © 2015 The Author(s).]

This study attempted to identify effects of trust between principal leadership and teacher professional learning in Hong Kong primary schools. To verify the potential mediating effects of trust as a component of school capacity, survey data with a sample of 970 teachers from 32 local primary schools was used. Two questionnaires were combined to investigate principal leadership and school capacity in the schools. Baron and Kenny’s four-step causal process for mediation analysis was employed to have a preliminary inquiry. To compensate weaknesses of the orthodox regression based approach, significance of the mediating effects of trust were tested using the Sobel’s test and bootstrapping method. Next, the seven core sets of principal leadership practices were used as multiple predictors, and mediating effects of trust between them and teacher professional learning were also examined. The findings affirmed the role of faculty trust as a mediator between principal leadership and teacher professional learning in Hong Kong primary schools.
[Copyright © 2015 The Author(s).]

Since the late 1990s, early childhood education in Hong Kong has progressively lounged a series of reforms to raise the quality of early year education. Along with the emphasis on adopting the 'child-centred' concept of children's learning, the Guide to the Pre-primary Curriculum issued in 2006 recommend an integrated approach in the curriculum design. The integrated "holistic" approach calls for a shift of paradigm from the formal didactic teaching of academic knowledge to an informal development of the children through quality teacher-children interactions. Hitherto, small class teaching environment is created via the increase in teacher-student ratio at the start of the 2003-2004 academic year. A review of literature on small class teaching suggested that teacher-children ratio, classroom settings and the relevant pedagogic applications are important ingredients for the philosophical enhancement of the small class spirit. This paper will report some preliminary data collected in a pilot study conducted in two classrooms in a Hong Kong Kindergarten. The findings are reported as case studies which suggest that the spirit of small class teaching is not restricted in an informal teaching environment but in some formal teaching settings in the school as well. Discussion and implications on this understanding will be made.

Since the creation of systems of mass education, national governments have looked beyond their borders to identify how to develop and improve their education systems. For many decades, the developing world looked to the education systems of the affluent and industrialized West. Since the mid-1980s, however, the source of models of best practice has shifted following the introduction of international tests of pupil achievement, e.g., the studies carried out by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA), as well as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), and Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). Such studies are seen as providing objective evidence of the effectiveness of school systems, and a common feature has been the consistently strong performance of pupils from a number of East Asian contexts (including Hong Kong), and some Scandinavian countries (especially Finland) (Grek 2009, Alexander 2010, Morris 2012). The education policies and practices of these "high performing" education systems and economies have emerged as models of best practices for policy makers around the world (Steiner-Khamsi 2004). Thus what was predominantly a West-East policy flow has become multidirectional. Historically, Hong Kong appropriated British education models as part of its colonial heritage. Significant reforms, tailored to the local context, were proposed by visiting experts from the UK. The process of decolonization began in 1984 with the Joint Declaration, stipulating the retrocession of the territory in 1997. Education policies in Hong Kong since the mid-1980s reflect the parting of ways in the political sense, as Hong Kong distances itself from its colonial past and draws increasingly on other sources to reform the educational system. As one of the "high performing" countries on both PISA and TIMSS, Hong Kong has been used as a model of good practice in many countries, especially in the West

Hong Kong is moving towards a knowledge-based economy. To nurture a population to continuously support and drive its development to achieve a world-class success, Hong Kong's education system has been reformed tremendously since 1997 with a balanced focus of academic and practical learning. Generic form of learning outcomes are critical outcomes for students to demonstrate high flexibility and adaptability in respond to the future ever-changing challenges. Using instruments that measure "cultural literacy" (Hui, 2012) and "student engagement" (Hui & Cheung, forthcoming), this study sets out the agenda to assess the development of generic learning outcomes of Hong Kong senior secondary school students, the extent to which they are well equipped with the skills to prepare themselves for a knowledge-based economy. Results of a survey study of 1,715 students inferred not up-to-standard performance and which questioned the design of the New Senior Secondary (NSS) school curriculum, the core subject of Liberal Studies and the Applied Learning courses in particular. Regression model further suggested generic learning outcomes could be explained largely by how schools plan and facilitate students‟ learning inside and outside the classroom. It is the primary role of NSS schools to provide students with meaningful and useful learning experiences to achieve the curriculum goal of fostering generic learning. This paper will contribute to the discussion of how to support more NSS school reform in Hong Kong.