This paper describes Hong Kong’s borrowing, primarily from the UK, of the assessment for learning policy, in the context of prolonged use of formal summative public examinations. The narrative review and analysis are guided by a social positivist critique of the assessment for learning policy in the Hong Kong context. This paper concludes that Hong Kong’s attempts to implement assessment for learning are ambitious but somewhat futile because of persistent use of public examinations for important decision-making. Change in Hong Kong may only happen through a gradual implementation of assessment for learning practices that takes into account cultural, societal, and historic norms. Critical issues are identified and recommendations are proposed for further implementation of assessment for learning in Hong Kong. Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Ltd.

Art education in Hong Kong has undergone various changes in response to educational reform. In art assessment, a major change in the Hong Kong New Senior Secondary (NSS) Curriculum is the inclusion of art criticism as a compulsory component of the new public examination. Assessing students’ abilities to interpret art in an art criticism public examination context is a critical issue in Hong Kong because the new senior secondary curriculum and assessment has brought attention to the role of written language in the art examination paper. This means the examination assesses not only students’ abilities to interpret art, but also their language abilities required to respond to art in written form. Since this new mode of assessment of art criticism has been published a number of issues have appeared. Recent studies show that teachers and students perceive this development negatively and they believe that the written format will assess students’ written language abilities rather than their critical abilities. These findings challenge the justification of the new art assessment policy and raise questions about the role of written language in responding to art. This article aims to raise the issue of the marriage between language and art criticism in the Hong Kong public examination context. It argues and examines the relationship of language to art interpretation, reasoning in the assessment, and issues in the public art criticism examination context. The issues addressed in this article provide opportunities for researchers and policy makers to reconsider and refine the new form of examination.
[Copyright © 2017 The Author. Ijade © 2017 NSEAD/John Wiley & Sons Ltd.]

Questionnaires, interview, and classroom observations were employed by the author to find out the "washback effect" of the Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination in English. The effect is shown most obviously in the change in teaching materials, not so much in the teaching methods.

本文討論在公開考試的框架下，如何邁向教改和新通識科的課程目標。以1994-2005年的高級程度通識教育科會考考試報告作為研究對象，本文嘗試找出公開考試的實際評分標準，並分析這些評分標準如何指導通識科的實際教與學經歷，討論教師和學生應如何面對和處理公開考試，以更有效地讓通識科的課程目標在學生的學習經歷中得到貫徹。
This paper discusses the question of how to achieve the curriculum objectives of the NSSLS subject within the public examination framework. Through studying the 1994-2005 AS Liberal Studies examination reports, this paper attempts to examine the actual grading criteria of the past LS examinations, and to analyze how these grading criteria have shaped teachers' and students' actual teaching and learning experiences. It then discusses strategies that teachers and students could adopt, in face of public examinations, to more effectively facilitate students' actual learning experiences that are in alignment with the LS curriculum objectives.
[Copyright of Hong Kong Teachers' Centre Journal is the property of Hong Kong Teachers' Centre at http://www.edb.org.hk/hktc]