Formative assessment is regarded as a means to provide teachers and students with information about the strengths and weaknesses of student learning with the ultimate goal of making responsive changes in teaching and learning. In Hong Kong, formative assessment has recently been promoted in schools. Through analyzing a case study, this paper aims to explore: (1) the key strategies employed by the school in assessing and improving students’ performance, (2) the effects of these strategies in student learning and (3) the challenges the teachers have encountered in practising formative assessment. The intention is to provide a living example for those teachers and policy makers who favour the use of formative assessment as the major approach to improving students’ learning.

Curriculum change in Hong Kong is often unsatisfactorily actualized. Yet reform in education and curriculum seems nonstop and inevitable for this international city in an era of globalization. Local policy-makers launched a comprehensive curriculum reform in 2001 (CDC, 2001). Regardless of the officials' keen effort to implement the said curriculum reform during these five years, studies still found that real change is implemented only to superficial extent (Yeung, 1994; 2005). In fact, most Hong Kong's classrooms could still be portrayed as displaying features that are characterized as the 'three Ts': teacher-centred, textbook-centered and test-centered (Adamson, Kwan & Chan, 2000). In recent years, the strategies untaken by the officials seem shifting between school-based initiatives and state-mandated attempts to promote forms of outcome-based education. External School Review(ESR) was initiated as a complementary measure for schools to self-evaluate its effectiveness and to 'ensure public accountability'(EMB, 2005). The officials believe that this forms in part a systematic and strong school development and accountability framework. However some informal, local critics are skeptical about the mechanism and frequently connect its notion to cutting of resources and closure of schools. Theoretically speaking, the concept of ESR relates to debates and discourses about standard and indicators, accountability in education, centralization and decentralization of curriculum decision-making, as well as teacher development. The present paper presentation wishes to critically analyze this current educational policy and inquire into the relation between ESR and the official intent to enforce and control curriculum change. Hopefully, questions like the following would also be addressed: how beneficial ESR has been in encouraging schools to develop and improve their curriculum and teaching? Has external inspection gone too far or not far enough? What are the pitfalls and perils

In the implementation of a 10-year educational reform since the turn of the century in Hong Kong, assessment has been one of the key areas of change. The importance of changing assessment practices in the process of teaching and learning has been discussed in various government documents since 1990. In the past, assessment practices were inclined to be mainly "assessment of learning" which was more summative in nature. In the reform, schools were encouraged to put more emphasis on "assessment for learning" which was considered more of a formative nature. On approaching the mid point of such reform, significant difference in its degree and scope of development can be seen in schools. In this particular paper, the focus is assessment reform in the primary school sector. The two concepts in assessment are explored by a detailed documentary analysis of assessment policies written on basic education over the last decade. Together with reviewing the current developments on assessment change in primary schools, implications for more effective use of assessment for enhancing teaching and learning are made.

One of the main focuses of education is to empower learners with the abilities of learning how to learn. The Curriculum Development Council (2000, p. 54) points out that “Assessment could facilitate learning to learn”. This kind of facilitation, however, can only be achieved by using a “right” form of assessment. The less effective of the forms of assessment, suggested by the Curriculum Development Council, are the ones that inhibit or narrow learning opportunities and therefore, their use should be reduced to a minimum. The “right” forms, accordingly, are the ones that provide learners with plenty of learning opportunities. This paper first highlights the problems of the assessment practices in Hong Kong education contexts by reporting the criticisms made by a review team and the findings of a small-scale study into the assessment practices in Hong Kong schools. Then it stresses the close relationship of assessment and learning and discusses the place of alternative assessment in this kind of relationship. Ten assessment strategies have been developed to bring the concept of assessment for learning into practice in educational contexts.
[Copyright © 2003 University of Macau.]