Most official literature would trace the lineage of China’s contemporary era of reforms to the Third Plenum of the 13th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) held in December 1978, which marked the final ascendency of Deng Xiaoping and his policy of ‘opening up and reform’ which reversed the Maoist path of communism. Within three decades, China has been transformed from a centrally planned economy to a thriving market economy under the so-called ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’. Private enterprises thrive alongside state-owned enterprises which now account for only some 30% of the nation’s industrial product. The central state was restructured through devolution and decentralization. New administrative systems in personnel, financial and assets management were installed. In a gist, the past thirty years of reforms - though implemented in a gradualist manner described by Deng as “crossing the river by touching the stones”, with tensions between reformist and conservative forces, periodic ups and downs, and setbacks and reversals, have nonetheless managed to break up the previous omnipresent party-state built upon the state’s extraction and monopoly of all resources (manpower, finance, properties and natural resources), operated through a party-controlled centralized cadre system, and state-owned production units and enterprises run by central ‘industrial’ ministries. At the gateway to mainland China stands Hong Kong, a British-ruled enclave until 1 July 1997 when this international city was reunified with the motherland. Unlike the mainland, Hong Kong has always enjoyed a British, and hence Western, style of administration. During colonial rule, Hong Kong had a long tradition of pursuing administrative and management reforms as a substitute for more fundamental constitutional reforms, in order to cope with the government’s legitimacy deficit and to be more responsive to public demands. The 1990s marked the heydays of public sector reform, when

Hong Kong has long been using high stakes examinations in the education system. High stakes tests are product-oriented which is less helpful for learning. In recent years in particular, Hong Kong would like to make a change to its examination system. The government sees that school-based assessment (SBA) can bring about many educational benefits. It can help reduce examination pressure and helps improve teaching and learning. Subsequently, a much wider use of SBA has recently been added to the assessment system as one important aspect of the assessment reform. The new initiatives have been received by the education sector in different ways. A study was thus conducted to understand how teachers responded to the new initiatives. About a hundred secondary school teachers were invited to complete a questionnaire. Analysis of the quantitative data revealed that teachers generally felt that SBA was beneficial to teaching and learning. However, the qualitative data showed that teachers perceived a lot of difficulties associated with SBA. To make SBA in Hong Kong a success, a lot of issues will need to be addressed. These will be reported and discussed during the presentation.

In the era of educational change, the performance of middle-managers for schools development is critical. Much recent literature revealed that middle managers play an important role in school reforms (Blandford, 1997; Bennett, 1995; Fleming & Aamesbury, 2001). In Hong Kong, the EdB has specific job specifications for the middle managers, e.g., deputy headship, and coordination role in school curriculum, counseling and guidance, extra-curricular activities, etc. Usually each middle manager has to lead a group of teachers to achieve their goals assigned by the principal or the school management committee. The workload of middle managers in the Hong Kong primary schools has escalated dramatically with the implementation of a wide range of reform initiatives. In order to support the professional development of middle managers in primary schools, the Department of Educational Policy and Management of the Hong Kong Institute of Education started to offer a middle manager leadership programme in 2005. In addition to the systematic lectures and workshops, participants had to go through action learning which included role-play and action learning sharing. This paper aims to review the effectiveness of the programme, with special interest on action learning. Based on the empirical evidence from the semi-structured interview, participants reflected that they learned better in experiential in-service training.It seems that this kind of training is better for the professional development of middlemanagers in enhancing their ability on leading teams and management of school development.

“Soft” policy has newly emerged as a policy implementation concept in relation to governance. Carried with a character of non-binding, it is designed for multilevel systems of governance where there is relative autonomy at different levels of collective decision-making. Originally “soft” policy was used in the field of international law or international relations and has recently been used in relation to European Union Policy. In the field of education, “soft” policy has gained attention since the adoption of different scales of education reforms in various countries that involved the governance and coordination among multilevel systems during the past decade. In real practice, “soft” methods or measures were used to assist implementation at various levels, particularly in the real contexts. According to Ahonen’s typology of soft policy-making methods (2001), the present study will explore how “soft” policy has been realized in the recent large-scale curriculum reform in Hong Kong. In particular, the study will explore how school teachers perceive these “soft” methods or measures in their school contexts. Implications will be drawn from these real cases of “soft” policy implementation as well.

As the millennium unfolds itself public education in Hong Kong is facing both enormous changes and tremendous challenges. The Hong Kong Government has affirmed its strong commitment to build up a strong education system for its people. The school organization and its governance has to be restructured in the direction of a more democratic and collaborative professional community. The implementation of school-based management in Hong Kong has resulted in the devolution of more responsibilities and authority to schools. A shift from hierarchical leadership to distributed and transformative leadership is needed. There is no doubt about the significance of principal leadership in schools. However, without the assistance of effective middle managers, it will be difficult to meet the targets for quality school education. Much recent literature has revealed that middle managers play an important role in leading school reforms. However, a significant number of middle managers admitted experiencing difficulty in enacting their leadership role in their workplace. It is of paramount importance that a robust leadership team of middle managers is built in schools and that they are equipped with more leadership concepts and skills. Since 2003, Yu has conducted research and developmental work on the leadership of middle managers. Focus groups have been regularly conducted to solicit the input of both school middle managers and school heads on needs assessment. The collected data have been used to design training projects. About 5 middle managers’ leadership training projects (Yu et al., 2009; Yu, 2007; Yu et al., 2005; Yu et al., 2004; Yu, 2004) supported by the Quality Education Fund of the Hong Kong Government and school sponsoring bodies have been organized and reported. Before designing training programmes, focus groups of primary and secondary school middle managers were conducted to solicit their needs. Whereas focus groups of primary and secondary principals were conducted to

The spread of quality assurance (QA) regimes in higher education has been an explosive phenomenon over the last 25 years. By one estimate, for example, half of all the countries in the world have adopted QA systems or QA regulatory agencies to oversee their higher education sector. Typically, this phenomenon is explained as a process of policy diffusion, the advent of marketization, the spread of neoliberalism, massification and, concomitantly, the emergence of a 'global market' for higher education, prompting governments to respond by validating standards, quality, and introducing certification and compliance regimes. In this paper I question the utility of these explanatory frameworks, specifically looking at the case of Hong Kong in order to explore the role coercive institutional isomorphism plays in policy adoption and the implications of this for regulatory performativity.
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This paper explores the predictive relationship between knowledge management and school capacity. A cross-sectional quantitative survey was designed to collect data from 427 teachers at 15 secondary schools in Hong Kong. A structural equation model was applied to explore the factor structure of the latent variables and their relationships. The results showed that knowledge accessibility, application and sharing were identified as the predictive factors for teacher learning capacity and organizational learning capacity.
[Copyright © Elsevier Ltd.].

This paper reports a study on the leadership capacities of a group of 185 aspiring principals. A questionnaire consisting of 24 questions was constructed to examine the levels of leadership capacities of these aspirants. The findings indicate that the aspirants seemed to feel more competent in the leadership area of 'teacher professional growth and development' than they did with regard to 'quality assurance and accountability', 'learning, teaching and curriculum', 'strategic direction and policy environment', 'external communication and connection to the outside world', and finally 'staff and resources management'.
[Copyright © Elsevier Ltd].