After the hand-over of Hong Kong to China in 1997, a series of educational innovations was introduced by the Special Administrative Region (SAR) Government. In fact, before he took his office, the Chief Executive of the SAR, Tung Chee Hwa, had publicly announced that he would tackle education issues. Thus, educational innovation has been implemented consistently since 1997. These innovations influence the whole education system, from classroom level to system level, in Hong Kong. The Government is deliberately playing the role as the pioneer in leading Hong Kong education into a relatively more professional era. Under these recent innovations, educational leaders will work in a context which is professionalised, organically organised, decentralised and proactive.
This paper will analyse three of these innovations, namely the exchange program of the Education Department, the new appraisal program for school principals and the assessment of teachers' language proficiency. These three innovations have covered both the system and the school level. The paper will further reveal the SAR government's intention to promote a new direction for its administration: the emphasis is no longer on experience but professional performance and appraisal. This paper will also deal with the likely outcomes of this series of educational innovations and their influences on educational leaders in the 'new' Hong Kong.
[Copyright of Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE) at http://www.aare.edu.au]

The switch of the teaching medium of junior secondary classes in Hong Kong from English (EMI) to Chinese (CMI) in 1998 has met strong opposition from parents for fear of possible decline in the learners' level of English proficiency due to reduction in exposure. To make up for this and to smoothen the transition from CMI to EMI in senior secondary level, a 3-year English Enrichment Programme (EEP) was piloted in selected schools starting 2001. An evaluation project assessing the effectiveness of the EEP was also launched in the same year. This paper reports the preliminary findings from the evaluation project on how well the students learnt in the EEP.
In the evaluation, emphasis has been given to analysing the extent to which three conditions necessary for optimal L2 learning were present in the students' learning process in the EEP. These conditions include comprehensible exposure and input, opportunities for L2 use with feedback, and motivation. The paper reports the process and findings of this evaluation. It was found that the three conditions did exist in the learning process, yet the quality of the provision of these conditions was doubtful. Recommendations will be offered on how the design and implementation of the EEP could be improved to ensure quality provision of the conditions so as to improve the effect of learning.
[Copyright of Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE) at http://www.aare.edu.au]