Since 2000, all schools in the public sector in Hong Kong have implemented school-based management. However, it is only recently that the government has passed a new bill to enforce the setting up of a mandated structure of the school-based council in schools. Many school sponsoring bodies are worried about a possible diminution of their control as a result of the new management committee structure. At individual school level, the readiness of school principals, teachers and parents seems to be the core of the question. Principals’ transformational and curriculum leadership in local schools seems to be weak. As a result, policy-makers attempt to work out ways to enhance the implementation of school-based management by providing training for school managers, promoting home–school relations and encouraging the professional development for principals. In addition, there is a need to enhance leadership development for supervisors and middle managers. Future challenges to schools include carrying out a smooth transformation of the present school management structure to the required incorporated management committees, effective implementation of school-based management under the new bill and quality training for other stakeholders.
[Copyright © Springer 2005.]

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.]

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.]

This paper aims to explore substantive findings from Hong Kong research studies of educational leadership published in core international journals between 1995 and 2014. It employs a systematic research review approach to analysis across a total of 160 published research papers. The review focuses on identifying and key research issue from a clearly delimited body of the relevant papers comprised of empirical, non-empirical and review/synthesis types of studies. The findings of the published papers are then explored and synthesized for any emergent theme as the research issue that might characterize the development of Hong Kong educational leadership in the past two decades. Analysis of the emergent themes is a two-stage process: (1) a comparative mapping of the themes cross the published paper; and (2) and in-depth coding of the themes for unlocking the meanings of the key research issues. The review results illustrate a methodological pattern, a set of key research issues and a research agenda grounded in the substantial findings of the published papers. The discussion highlights the issues of Hong Kong educational leadership the scholars were concerned with, affecting the frontline of kindergartens, primary and secondary schools.

Despite school middle leaders are growing in their importance in the school in recent years, the understanding of their leadership roles and practices are unclear. In addition, the changing expectations of middle leadership lead them into confusion of roles and an unknown space of practice. This paper intends to portrait the conception of middle leadership in schools in light of the teachers' perception and expectation of middle leadership. Data were collected from interviews of four subject department heads/coordinators and five subject teachers who worked with the middle leaders closely in three special schools in Hong Kong. Initial findings show that the middle leaders were struggling with role ambiguity – unclear positioning of work, which led to overloading and frustration in work as they often developed a symptom of doing this and that. Although both the middle leaders and teachers often had high and broad expectations for middle leaders, i.e. excellency in both professional and management duties, it is found that the middle leaders were usually ill-prepared for the multiple roles. The paper concludes that middle leaders have to understand the breadth, depth and substances of middle leadership in school so that they can be prepared well for performing their roles and responsibilities.