With a view to achieving quality school education (QES) with all its concomitant benefits, the Education Commission published a Consultation Document on the subject in November 1996. Public views were sought thereafter for two months and the final report is expected to come out in the near future. Generally speaking, the public found the recommendations contained in the Document positive and forward-looking. We strongly back the Commission's brave initiative in attempting to improving school education in Hong Kong. Of the various areas in which recommendations for improvement were made, we would like to focus our discussion on three of them, namely, the relationship between SMI and the development of quality school education, the requirements for schools to be economically efficient and quality assurance inspections. Through studying these three areas in greater detail, we hope that we will be in a better position to suggest some of the prerequisites for quality school education and ways to make schools more accountable to the general public.

This paper discusses the development of civic education curriculum in Hong Kong and outlines the changes of its nature in different historical phases. How civic education curriculum of Hong Kong responded to differential social needs in both the colonial era and after 1997 is examined. Important curriculum documents are analyzed to facilitate the discussion. How civic education in Hong Kong evolved from teaching students to identify themselves with a city to identify themselves with a nation and a globalized world is highlighted.

The civic mission of schools in nurturing political literature, critical thinking and participatory citizens has always been played down in Hong Kong schools. On one hand, teaching civic education has never been ranked high in the education agenda. On the other hand, because of the conservative nature of schools, students are rarely encouraged to participate in school governance for the enhancement of their citizenship development. Funded by the General Research Fund (GRF) in Hong Kong, the authors conducted a quantitative survey on students’ participation in school governance and their citizenship development in 2013 to explore 1) students’ conception of “good citizens”; 2) the level and scope of student participation in school governance; and 3) the facilitating and hindering factors influencing student participation. This paper is a report on the simple statistical results of the survey findings. With reference to Westheimer and Kahne’s typologies, the findings revealed that the students had an eclectic understanding of citizenship, with higher scores for Personally Responsible Citizen and lower scores for Participatory, Justice Oriented and Patriotic Citizen, reflecting a conservative orientation. Concerning the implementation of school civic mission through student participation in school governance, it was found that students were rarely allowed to engage in important school matters, such as formulation of school rules and discussion of the school development plan. Our findings also revealed that schools were more inclined to inform students and consult them rather than confer real participation and powers to them. The paper concludes that the current practice of student participation in school governance does not facilitate the nurturing of active participatory citizens, particularly of a Justice Oriented nature, and this is urgently needed for the democratic development of Hong Kong.
[Copyright © 2014 JSSE.]

Present day education requires professional expertise of teachers in facilitating modern learning, which enables students to cope with life changes brought forth by a learning society in the new era to come. Reform in school, which liberates teachers from bureaucratic practices and creates a new professional work culture is inevitable. Hong Kong schools now undergo quality school education reforms where organisational and school based management innovations are the focus of reform changes. The reform aims, among others, at enhancing professional involvement of teachers in school administration and curriculum for the sake of fostering the lifelong learning among students, a paradigm shift of learning in the learning society in the forthcoming Y2K. Observations however reveal that the profeesional role of Hong Kong school teachers does not change much as expected in recent policy reform papers on school education.

Since the political handover in 1997, there has been a chain of reform initiatives aiming at enhancing the quality of educational services in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. Such episodes include the issuing of a report on quality school education measures, the promulgation of a new set of education aims and the impending education reform to bring forth life-long learning. Together these would substantially transform the landscape of education in Hong Kong. This paper aims at reviewing the changing lanscape of Hong Kong's education. Particularly, the paper would explore the following: 1) the degree of continuity and change as represented in the current development 2) the paradigm shift in education especially with respect to the meaning of learning, the role of teachers and schools and the sort of personality we want to build up for the future. At the end, the paper will also point out the potential risks we need to guard against in this change period.

Contrary to the belief that education would empower women to attain a higher degree of equality with men in the society, recent researches in the West tend to indicate that in schools male students are actually favored in the classroom. Sadker & Sadker (1985) found that in all grades and classes of primary schools in the District of Columbia boys dominated the classroom communication with the tacit approval of their teachers. Morgan & Dunn (1988) suggested that boys were more 'visible' in the classroom and were granted more academic leeway. Such bias is taken as one of the factors which contribute to the nurturing of gender characters that dovetail the roles of the two genders in the society. The present study was undertaken to reveal whether newcomers to the teaching profession in Hong Kong will be gender-biased in handling their classes and if so, how and also why. It is hoped that result of the interview will cast light on whether the curriculum of teacher education course should be restructured to enhance the gender-fairness of the student teachers who would soon become the pillar of the teaching profession.

The paper reports a study on the political socialisation of a patriotic (left wing /pro-Beijing) school in Hong Kong. Well before the lowering of the Union Jack on 1 July 1997, there had been a number of leftist secondary schools, which maintained very close relationship with mainland China and rendered habitual support to Beijing government. These patriotic schools have been relatively very political in nature, as compared with the political tone that featured other schools. The researcher has been allowed to conduct a qualitative research study in one of the patriotic schools. Beside consulting the written documents and archives of the school, detailed interviews have been conducted with the following parties, namely teachers, students, the principal, the supervisor, past students and parents, so as to know the kind of political socialisation the students received in the school. The paper aims at exploring how students in the school will learn their political knowledge particularly the understanding of political affairs in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and the People's Republic of China.