School-based Management (SBM) is regarded as the centrepiece of the current educational reforms which aims to enhance quality of education since 1980s (Caldwell & Spinks, 1992; Cheng, 1996b; Gamage, 1996; Wong, 1995). To enhance quality culture, flexibility, transparency and accountability, the policy-makers introduce a new school management reform policy, entitled “The School Management Initiative (SMI)”, to Hong Kong schools in 1991. Mr. Tung Chee-hwa, the Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), even announced in his policy address (Tung, 1998) that all schools should practise SBM by 2000. With reference to the latest SMI report, there are altogether 43% secondary schools and 23.3% primary schools practising SBM in 1997-98 academic year. The implication shows that many schools need to join the new initiative within two years time. Why is there a huge gap in between the policy and the front line? In order to have a closer look at how people interact and how these effects affect the promotion of school improvement in the change process, a small scale research with a stratified sample of nine aided primary schools was conducted in May, 1998. The result of the findings demonstrated some important implications that effective leadership, collegiality, healthy interpersonal relations are essential to accelerate the effectiveness of the school management scheme which can enhance the quality of school education of Hong Kong as a whole.
[Copyright © 2000 The Hong Kong Institute of Education]

No matter whether in the context of Hong Kong or other parts of the world, the school reform towards school-based management is a complicated change process involving the multiple school constituencies and creating uncertainties as well as opportunities for them to learn, change, and develop. This paper aims to report and analyze some significant and interesting phenomena observed in the development and implementation of the school-based management policy in Hong Kong. The findings suggest that the school-based management reform is a long-term process of policy development, in which all concerned constituencies can contribute to further define, develop, and shape the policy. Only when the involved actors perceive more positive meanings from the change, they are more effective in creating and using opportunities for development and maximizing all potential benefits from the process of school reform. Hopefully, the Hong Kong case of school-based management can provide useful implications for school-based management movements in both local and international contexts.

Numerous educational change and school reforms have been conducted to pursue educational effectiveness and educational quality in different parts of the world. Unfortunately, most of the past educational reforms with focus on fragmentary improvement and remedial treatment are not sufficient to bring holistic school development and long term effectiveness, and inevitably many of them have experienced serious frustration if not failure. This paper aims to propose a new direction including ten important tendencies for ongoing and future educational reform and school reengineering in Hong Kong and international contexts. The tendencies are: (1) Towards multiple school functions from simplistic purposes; (2) Towards school autonomy and self-initiative through school-based management; (3) Towards school healthy functioning through a knowledge-based profile; (4) Towards school continuous learning and development through strategic management; (5) Towards human initiative through multi-level self management in school; (6) Towards school multiple effectiveness through a dynamic process; (7) Towards holistic education in school through layer management; (8) Towards synergy and effectiveness through congruence in school; (9) Towards total home-school collaboration and community support for resources, ideas, and legitimacy; (10) Towards school driving force through transformational leadership. The educational reforms in this new direction can support schools to facilitate continuous development of students and staff, increase support of parents and community, improve technology in education and management, and pursue multiple functions more effectively at different levels of our society. Hopefully, all those concerned particularly our students and teachers can benefit from the coming educational reforms.

There is a strong need to understand, monitor, and enhance educational quality. This paper reports on a project that developed a framework of indicators for monitoring educational quality in Hong Kong primary schools. The framework was developed through various case studies and 2 large surveys of over 200 Hong Kong primary schools (involving over 650 classes, 3,800 teachers, and 20,000 students) during 1991-95. A preliminary framework, based on the research literature, included indicators at the student individual level, the classroom level, the teacher individual level, the teacher group level, and the organizational level. The framework was tested and developed through the 2 surveys (the first conducted in 1992 and the second in 1993-94) and a total of 12 case studies. Survey data was used to map the education profiles of Hong Kong primary schools by means on indicators; by percentage of schools in high, satisfactory, and low performance; by distribution of schools on each indicator; and by profiles of characteristics of effective and ineffective schools. Six tables and seven figures are included.

In Hong Kong, the move towards quality education has stirred up waves of changes in the education setting in the late 90s. Drastic changes have been implemented in terms of curriculum, methodology and forms of school management. Borrowed heavily from the Western democracies, the contemporary educational policy and practice in Hong Kong are increasingly directed by the market model of educational provision valuing consumer choice; accountability; quality assurance; devolution of authority and participative management process. In the face of these changes, three issues are pertinent to school leadership - Firstly, the approaches towards School-based Management stress the importance of school heads to work closely with the various stakeholders who may have different and often conflicting role expectations on their school heads. Role incumbents may find themselves confused when determining framework of defined outcomes and accountability. Secondly, the injection of consumer control into school operation and the marketisation of educational provision denote the need of school heads to have a deeper understanding of the needs, expectations and aspirations of the various stakeholders directly or indirectly involved in school management. Thirdly, increasing demands for school heads to seek professional development opportunities that will broaden their existing knowledge and increase their array of management skills to cope with the current changes. While research literature is enormous on the studies of role expectations and job aspirations of school heads especially from the perspective of teachers, parents and even heads themselves, however, there is a lack of robust research locally and abroad on the perspective of the neglected and yet the most directly involved stakeholder - the students. The present study attempts to develop understanding of the role expectations of primary school heads as viewed from the students' perspective and to identify the effects of such expectations

Contemporary practice of school-based management world-wide aims at providing schools with increased autonomy so that they may acquire the necessary flexibility, responsiveness and proactiveness to meet the challenges ahead in the changing external and internal school environment. Theoretically, schools practicing school-based management may therefore be more effective. However, researchers do not have convergent views regarding the effect of school-based management. Some noted very encouraging and positive effects. On the other hand, some observed fairly negative results with the absence of empirical evidence that school-based management is related to students’ educational outcomes. Responding to these observations, Cheung & Cheng (1996a) asserted that the effectiveness of school-based management depends largely on the self management behavior of teachers working in groups and individually. In order to maximize the benefit of school-based management, key actors should practice self management cycles at the school, group and teacher levels. This paper discusses how the practice of this self management framework could facilitate the school, groups and individual teachers in continuous self learning and development, and in turn enhance multi-level performance in school. Taking the practice of School Management Initiative (SMI – as one type of school-based management) in Hong Kong schools as an example, the paper first analyses the recommendations set out in the SMI policy document. Then the authors examine the degree to which these recommendations could facilitate multi-level self management of the key actors in school. Based on the result of the analysis and the conception of Cheung & Cheng (1996a), the paper proposes directions for further development of school-based management in Hong Kong. It is hoped that the recommended directions may provide insights for both the policy makers and school practitioners to further develop the practice of school-based management