There has been a massification of higher education in Hong Kong since the late 1980s. In addition to programmes offered by local higher education institutions, there are plenty of off-shore degree programmes provided by overseas institutions. In the meantime, Hong Kong has been restructured to an international financial centre, and its financial sector has become one of the largest employers. This cross-sectional study based on Hong Kong's 2011 census data examined the economic effects of university education in terms of earnings in the financial sector of Hong Kong. The major findings about the earnings effect in the sector are: firstly, a match between education and occupation does not necessarily bring about an earnings advantage; secondly, it refutes previous studies reporting that women are disadvantaged in terms of pay as compared with men; thirdly, workers holding an off-shore degree suffer an earnings disadvantage compared with those holding a local or overseas degree. The results also revealed that the provision of off-shore degree programmes in Hong Kong might be of concern to the government and community. Copyright ©Springer Netherlands.

Adolescent problems in Hong Kong have brought questions about their moral development and mental health to light. Moral education for preschool children will be strategically important to address these issues because applying early educational interventions to preschool children will effectively enhance their personal development. This article highlights the inadequacy of the Hong Kong preschool curriculum guides in the promotion of moral development in children. The lack of a consensus about the values and character that preschool children should develop is a fundamental problem of implementing preschool moral education in Hong Kong. If moral education is regarded as a school curriculum, either formal or informal, the objectives, content and assessment should be closely adhered to one another. In addition, the learning and teaching activities should also be in line with student's developmental characteristics and experiences. The O-C-A model is then proposed for moral education in the preschool settings of Hong Kong. Advice has also been made for the promotion of moral education in Hong Kong's early childhood settings.
[Copyright of Global Studies of Childhood is the property of SAGE Publications.]

Studies on school leadership in Hong Kong have mainly focused on primary and secondary schools, with only a handful of studies looking at leadership in early childhood education. This paper aims to report the findings of a study on strategic leadership in Hong Kong's kindergartens. It discusses the challenges that Hong Kong kindergarten leaders are facing and the need for practising strategic leadership. It then reports the findings of practices valued by the leaders of Hong Kong kindergartens. The findings of this study reveal, that apart from the abilities to exercise sound planning and management in school, leaders' reflective, flexible and systems thinking and their willingness in continuous professional and network development are crucial to leading today's kindergartens. This study also indicates that leaders' contextual intelligence is important for exercising strategic leadership. The significance of this study lies in its contribution to the investigation of leadership practices in early childhood education, the need to further explore how well kindergarten leaders are practising strategic leadership and the implications for the development of principal preparation programmes.
[Copyright of Educational Management Administration & Leadership is the property of SAGE Publications Ltd.]

This article examines the quality of Hong Kong's sub-degree level education provided by the self-financing institutes in terms of its impact on the earnings of workers, based on Hong Kong's 2006 by-census data. Education is an investment in human capital that enhances the productivity of workers and increases their lifetime incomes; and a more productive investment will produce a higher rate of return. The effects of education on workers' earnings can be regarded as a proxy for measuring the quality of education undertaken. This study shows that, as regards earnings, and therefore (indirectly) quality, the quality of sub-degree level education provided by some self-financing institutes is statistically significantly lower than that provided by publicly-funded institutes.
[Copyright of Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1360080X.2012.689180]

In the 2005/2006 academic year, TWGHs Mr and Mrs Kwong Sik Kwan College received a Quality Education Fund (QEF) grant to research ways to develop the critical literacy skills of Hong Kong junior secondary students. The paper describes the programme, which was implemented across the Chinese and English key learning areas, using the Four Resources Model (Freebody and Luke, 1990) as a planning schema. The paper identifies the incidental benefits of developing the critical reader response skills in which students required in the new senior secondary English and Chinese curriculum.
東華三院鄺錫坤伉儷中學於二零零五/二零零六年度獲優質教育基金撥款，在校內推行「校本讀思維計劃」，旨在探討和發展有效的教學策略和資源，以助初中學生發展閱讀、寫作和批判性思維的能力。本文旨在報告這計劃之進度，並討論語文教師在面對課程改革時，應如何適應課程中的新元素，並指出學校需從初中開始培養學生批判思考能力，以迎接未來新高中課程的需求與改變。
[Copyright of Hong Kong Teachers' Centre Journal is the property of Hong Kong Teachers' Centre at http://www.edb.org.hk/hktc]