In the World Declaration on Education for All, Jomtien, 1990, Article 3 states that no groups of children should “suffer any discrimination in access to learning opportunities”. Hong Kong is now considering a number of major and wide ranging reforms to education which will move closer to this goal. These include substantial reforms to the curriculum, removal of most examinations and the gradual removal of banding by ability. This paper focuses on ability banding, discusses the main issues and shares some data from an ongoing study on equity and excellence in Hong Kong schools.
[Copyright © 2000 Chulalongkorn University.]

A high quality timetable in a school can reduce grievances of the teaching force and enhance teaching quality. This survey aims to understand the scope of the timetabling exercise and the profile of the timetabling process in Hong Kong secondary schools, and to investigate existing problems encountered. The ultimate goal is to have a complete picture of the timetabling exercise so as to provide a basis for suggesting solutions which will improve this exercise. We sent out questionnaires to 480 secondary schools in Hong Kong; 173 schools responded. The result indicates that timetabling in a typical secondary school involves the allocation of an average of 53 teachers to teach subjects of 29 classes in 48 blocked time slots and 38 constrained locations under several constraints. Nearly 80% of the secondary schools used computers to assist the scheduling task. About one-third of the schools used timetabling software to generate their timetables. However, it was found that the use of automated timetabling systems could only complete some 67% of the available slots. The remaining part involves more constraints, and hence timetablers spend much effort in filling the last slots. 40% of users were frustrated by the changing constraints of the timetabling task. The survey results indicated that further research on the automation of the timetabling task is urgently needed.
[Copyright © 1997 Elsevier.]

This paper describes the experience of a teacher educator in fostering teacher development in a reading project in Hong Kong. The teacher educator is interested in finding out the perceptions of teachers in the project and the factors affecting their perceptions and thus participation in the project. Teachers were interviewed and their lessons observed. A study of documents gave background information of the school. The interactions with the teachers in school functions, lesson observation, discussions and workshops recorded in the researcher’s diary had led to holistic interpretation of the teachers’ participation in the project. It is argued that the teacher’s sense of identity, value and moral purposed play an important but often neglected role in their involvement in an innovation.
[Copyright © 2004 International Society for Teacher Education.]

Encouraging parent involvement is one of the prime focuses of promoting home-school cooperation in current education reform in Hong Kong. This paper contains research data collected through qualitative methods aiming at capturing the thoughts and perceptions of twelve parents and twelve teachers in three primary schools in Hong Kong so as to explore whether both parties are ready for parent-school cooperation. Findings indicated that both parents and teachers demonstrated cognitive and affective awareness of parent involvement outside school while teachers were strongly unwilling to see parents being involved in decision making. To promote parent-school collaboration, it is important to consider teacher-parent relationships and the influence of Chinese culture on parent involvement. The paper also serves to provide scholars with academic insights for further investigation and policy makers with practical knowledge in developing appropriate strategies to promote home-school cooperation.
[Copyright © 2002 Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization.]

The discussion of market in education is controversial and often value-laden. This paper aims at exploring the attempts made by the government of Hong Kong to develop a vibrant private sector in school education through the Direct Subsidy Scheme. The scheme allows participating schools to draw funds both from tuition fees and government subsidy on the one hand and promises greater freedom in school operation on the other. This paper will discuss how the scheme was first coined and its significant development. Attention will be paid to how the development of the scheme may have affected the landscape of school education in Hong Kong. Focus will be placed on how it may have an impact on equality of education, class, social mobility and the nature of education. It is hoped that this will become a case to help the reflections on the complexities relating to introducing market to education.
[Copyright © 2006 Biblioteca Virtuală ASE.]

Since the early 1990s, the pace of educational reform in Hong Kong has accelerated and broadened to incorporate almost all areas of schooling. The reforms introduced during this period can be subsumed under what has generally been labelled the quality movement. In this paper, we review and comment on a number of policy reform initiatives in the four areas of "Quality Education," English Language Benchmarking, Initial Teacher Training and the Integration of Pupils with Special Needs into Ordinary Classrooms. Following a brief description of each policy initiative, the reforms are discussed in terms of their consistency, coherence and cultural fit.
[Copyright © 2000 The Education Policy Analysis Archives.]

This study examines the impact of principal leadership practices on student academic outcomes in four Hong Kong primary schools. Given the increased accountability mechanisms confronting schools in Hong Kong, this study is based on the assumption that principal practices that respond directly to accountability policy or link to human resources development will be most influential. This does not necessarily contradict the assumption that principal leadership practices are generic and contextualised. This study will adopt a case study design. The data will be collected from 4 local schools with varied strategies, including online student math tests, and teacher questionnaire surveys. The student math test items will be selected from item banks of standardised tests. The questionnaires will be adapted from Walker and Ko’s (2011) and Leithwood and Jantzi’ s (2000) scales respectively, each covering extensively 7 dimensions with the number of items reduced to 33. The test scores will be aggregated and standardised, and used as student academic outcomes. The two questionnaires will be combined and used for the teacher survey. They will attempt to measure teachers’ perceptions of principal leadership practices and conditions in the schools. The individual responses of the participants will be aggregated to the person level and school level, and then subjected to descriptive, comparative, and inferential statistical analyses. Factors from both principal leadership practices and school conditions that synergistically contribute to student achievement will be indentified and verified, and effects specified. Given the limited number of schools in the sample, findings at the teacher and student levels will be triangulated and discussed as rich descriptions of cases. It is hoped that it will inform practitioners and researchers the interrelatedness between principal leadership practices, school conditions, and student achievement. The findings may also generate some indicative findings