Purpose: A new academic structure for senior secondary and higher education was introduced to Hong Kong in 2009/2010. This paper aims to: (1) compare the cohort from the old academic structure (Cohort 2010) and the cohort from the new academic structure (Cohort 2015) on the 14 categories of generic competencies; and (2) compare these attributes among students from different divisions in a tertiary institution in Hong Kong.Design/methodology/approach: Self-Assessment of All-Round Development (SAARD) questionnaires were distributed to students who took the two-year sub-degree programmes offered by the College of Professional and Continuing Education, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University in 2010 and 2015 on a self-administered basis. A total of 4,424 students have returned the questionnaires. Data were analyzed with t-test to compare between the two cohorts.Findings: When comparing Cohort 2015 with Cohort 2010, significantly higher scores were observed on five areas such as global outlook and healthy lifestyle (p<0.05). Significantly lower scores were observed on the other five areas such as problem solving, critical thinking and leadership (p<0.05). Students from all divisions unanimously showed higher perceived rating on social and national responsibility but lower perceived rating on leadership (p<0.05).Originality/Value: The elimination of one public examination, the newly included components such as Other Learning Experiences (OLE) and the compulsory Liberal Studies were believed to contribute partially to the diverse responses of the two cohorts. The dramatic change of the curriculum has not changed the examination culture in Hong Kong which may hinder the development of generic skills among students. Copyright © 2021 Emerald Group Publishing Limited

The critical mass of modern educational provision in Hong Kong has long been provided by the private sector. The public education system was created by the charities and religious bodies during the colonial period, though the government was later involved in the management of the system (see Choi & Kan, forthcoming, for the development of educational governance in Hong Kong). Thus, the presence of the private sector in ‘public’ schooling has long been the norm. When the educational privatisation trend, which started in the US and UK in the 1980s, reached Hong Kong, the government opened doors for further privatisation of public schooling, in the form of educational outsourcing. Educational outsourcing soon became prevalent: a document-based study on outsourcing in English teaching in a third of publicly funded secondary schools (Choi, 2018) showed that three-quarters of schools outsourced, with three contracts per year on average. However, the practice did not draw much attention from the public or scholars, in this ‘already outsourced’ education system (Bates, Choi, & Kim, 2019, p. 10). The lack of attention partly came from the fact that the introduction of educational outsourcing was subtle. It was conducted as part of a wider initiative of the privatisation of public services and occurred through system change rather than through legislation or policy. For instance, the Education Bureau (EDB), a counterpart of the Ministry of Education of some countries, instituted the School-based Management (SBM). The SBM allowed for schools to deploy their funds with maximum autonomy. EDB additionally created funds to support schools through outsourcing. Because English is recognised as a crucial social capital for securing higher education and prestigious jobs, schools mobilised the extra funds to purchase English teaching, making it the most popular area for outsourcing (Choi, Walker, Tang, Ko, & Chiu, 2018). Drawing on data collected through three interrelated research projects

This presentation reports the initial findings of a study that examines university governance in relation to the institutional and cultural settings of the higher education systems of three Chinese societies – Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. The research employs a mixed-method strategy that consists of semi-structured interviews and a small-scale survey. The qualitative part of the research sought to explain the coordination mechanism in university governance through an analysis of data generated from 57 interviews. Evidences collected from the interviews revealed the interactions and relationships amongst the various actors on governance matters, and constructed a taxonomy of institutional balance of power in the higher education systems of the three Chinese societies. The qualitative research also generated 12 situations of governance matters in relation to cultural hybridity, informed by corresponding theoretical components. The small-scale survey, in which 261 manager-academics from the three societies rated the 12 scenarios of cultural hybridity in terms of their realism and acceptableness, then captured cultural differences in handling governance matters in the three higher education systems. This quantitative research reveals that Macau has greater acceptance of these cultural scenarios in comparison with Hong Kong and Taiwan. However, the figures show that most of these cultural situations are generally considered unacceptable, though their likelihood varies in the three places. These findings offers insights into the relationships between institutional forms and cultural features of higher education governance in the three societies. Copyright © 2020 CHER-Hong Kong.

This comparative analysis aims to capture the complex roles and positionings of the International Baccalaureate (IB) in conjunction with local education systems in Hong Kong, Singapore, and South Korea. Our analysis focused on how the IB’s institutional legitimacy is presented in the three societies. We conducted a documentary analysis of texts on the introduction and implementation of IB programmes into local school systems. Our findings suggest that there are commonalities and variations in how the IB is interpreted by key local agents and is positioned into local education systems. Specifically, across the three societies, the IB has expanded continuously. At the same time, its institutionalisation process varies by each society’s socio-historical context and needs: substantive legitimacy as the international curriculum of choice in Hong Kong, a quiet supplement to elite education in Singapore, and instrumental curriculum borrowing for fixing the education system in Korea. We also find that the institutionalisation of the IB is limited at a symbolic level and controlled by the Singaporean government, while the IB is saliently promoted by local education authorities in the context of education reform in Korea. The institutionalisation process of the IB in Hong Kong is primarily swayed by market principles under the existing school choice system. Copyright © 2021 Educational Review.