Across the globe, many countries have incorporated new managerialism and marketization to reform their education systems. Feminist studies have already pointed out that these changes are gendered and masculinized and have documented their impacts on women teachers in secondary, higher and further education. Yet interestingly, while primary teaching is a feminized occupation, the ways that these changes and the associated practices are gendered and affected women teachers are relatively under-researched . This article, based on a case school in Hong Kong, attempts to fill this gap. By teasing out the gendered assumptions embedded in management strategies, it will show how an entrepreneurial school has attempted to succeed in a competitive educational market by exploiting young women, discriminating motherhood and forging competition among women of different educational qualifications. While making visible the patriarchal interests and masculine norms of the school, the article also aims to illuminate the contradictions and tensions inherent in, or generated, by those strategies.
[Copyright of Gender & Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09540250042000300394]

Set within the market-driven context in educare for young children in Hong Kong, a Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China, this paper points to the importance of exploring the definitions of quality in early childhood programmes from the multiple perspectives of school stakeholders. This study describes two preschools that were rated highly in the quality assurance inspections. Data collected in semi-structured, individual and group interviews indicated that the views of the school stakeholders on the quality of early childhood programmes shifted from childrearing to developmental nurturing but still emphasised academic learning and preparedness. This was largely due to the 'backwash effect' of primary education creating academic pressure on the local preschools. The two case study schools formulated successful strategies for reconciling conflicts between professional values of learning through play and parental expectations of academic preparation for primary education. In addition, the schools put a lot of effort into sharpening their competitive edge. They did this by maintaining close communication with their parents through various channels and offering free after-school custodial care, emotional and financial support. These are outside the primary duties of a preschool but highlight the way in which schools in the local field address and give high priority to parents' needs and expectations. In line with Woodhead's 1998 contextually appropriate approach to quality, the study sets a challenge for our understanding of quality frameworks for early childhood programmes. These should not be based mainly on a universalist view of developmental appropriateness but should also take into account the multiplicity of stakeholders' views on quality in a market-driven context. The data also demonstrate that the provision of preschooling in Hong Kong is shaped by market forces. The implications for quality educare are discussed.
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There is an increasing demand from the public and the field to improve the quality of early childhood education in Hong Kong. The Hong Kong Education Commission has recently released an "education blueprint for the 21st century", which presents a set of reform proposals for the education system in Hong Kong. In the document, early childhood education has been acknowledged as the foundation for life-long learning. A key reform proposal is to build a new culture for quality early childhood education through upgrading professional competence and enhancing quality assurance mechanisms. The present paper provides a general background of existing practices in the preschool years, highlights issues that require attention in order to improve quality, and outlines the reforms introduced by the Education Commission. The implications of these reforms and the associated challenges are then discussed in the areas of quality assurance, curriculum, professional development, parental involvement and financial assistance for the early childhood education sector.
[Copyright of Early Child Development and Care is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0300443022000022387 ]

It has been a global trend, since the 1980s, that the process of marketisation has been influential in the decision making of social policies around the world, and that this tidal wave is now crossing over to the Asia–Pacific region as well. Education policy, as one of the important social policies for many developing countries, has been influential in the forefront of national development in terms of manpower training, as well as in other arenas of economic and social developments. In this way, these countries are trying to improve the quality of their educational services so that they can be more competitive in order to cater for the demands in the international markets. One of the outcomes of this global trend is the international quality assurance movement in streamlining the educational institutions as well as in using different coping strategies to promote quality education for all concerned. For the Chinese mainland, it seems that the central government is adopting a policy of decentralisation in getting local governments to use multiple channels of resources and other methods to provide for their own educational services. Hong Kong as a Special Administrative Region (SAR) of China, however, has adopted quite a different approach by employing the principle of managerialism in order to enhance its competitiveness in providing quality education to meet the increasing market demands. Hence, the present study is to compare and contrast the educational reforms and coping strategies that have been adopted by the socialist mainland, on the one hand, and the capitalist Hong Kong SAR, on the other hand, in order to face this new challenge of marketisation.
[Copyright of Comparative Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03050060020020417]