One measure of current education reform in Hong Kong is reporting school performance to the public to increase the transparency and accountability of schools, enhance parents' right of access to information, and provide guides for choosing schools. This article examines the controversies and politics involved and shows how the sociopolitical construction of information are connected to crucial questions about how the conflicting values and expectations of different stakeholders are balanced. Advocating public school performance reporting without adequate deliberation could introduce anti-educational and unethical consequences, however unintended. Drawing on the works by Albert Meijer and findings from Hong Kong, this study provides additional empirical evidence and conceptual insights for understanding the complex dynamics of school transparency in the context of public sector accountability. The article concludes with analytical and ethical implications of the Hong Kong experience and recommendations for policy makers, particularly concerning the value judgments on the right to information, freedom of choice, transparency, accountability, freedom of the press, and professionalism.
[Copyright of Education & Urban Society is the property of Sage Publications, Inc.]

Little research has explored the challenges of difference and difficulty to principal leadership in changing school contexts. This paper explores two Chinese principals’ journeys to enact different leadership approaches to overcome these challenges during a time of massive education reform. Three specific questions are asked: What challenges do the principals face in diverse student populations? What leadership practices do the principals adopt to support the learning development of these students? What support do the principals need most to enact this leadership? This cross-case study, conducted in Hong Kong, finds that principal leadership that focuses on inclusion is important in efforts to overcome these challenges, with innovative and flexible interventions to ensure equality in student learning development. Despite this, they need support from every part of the school community: the school sponsoring body, the teaching team and parents. The implications of these findings for interpreting the meanings of principal leadership for inclusion are also discussed. Copyright © 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

In recent years, both Singapore and Hong Kong have been ranked top in international education rankings. They are widely admired as high-performing education systems (HPES) and, not surprisingly, among the best education systems in the world. The success stories of Singapore and Hong Kong education have aroused widespread attention internationally among different stakeholders, such as policymakers, researchers and practitioners, to investigate if it is possible for their policies and practices to be learned and borrowed by other countries. In this article, we stress the importance of context in understanding policy phenomena and possibilities for policy transfer. The Singapore and Hong Kong education systems are facing critical issues such as the economization of education, educational disparities and the paradigm shift from meritocracy to parentocracy. How well they deal with these policy issues will determine if their present international standing continues into the future. This article provides a critical review of their education policies to explore how these policies can be refined and adjusted in order to cope with the challenges facing both education systems.
[Copyright of Infancia Y Aprendizaje is the property of Routledge Journals, Taylor & Francis Ltd. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02103702.2018.1434043]

Outsourcing of the curriculum delivery to educational service providers (ed-outsourcing) has been widely practiced around the globe. Hong Kong is not an exception, but the phenomenon remains rather hidden and under-researched. Drawing on a survey with teachers from 62 schools in Hong Kong (N=215), this study investigates the current practice of ed-outsourcing across subjects, teachers’ and school leaders’ perceptions of it, and its implications on the issues of quality and equity of education. Some interesting and even controversial findings from the study show that there are efforts to ensure the quality and equity of outsourced education, but more is needed. Copyright © 2018 CESHK.

為應對香港社會多元化且高質量的教育需求,香港政府於1991年設計並實施了"直接資助學校計劃"。"直資學校"在享受政府發放的經常性津貼的同時被允許收取學費,並享受較大的辦學自由權,用以向學生提供額外的支持服務。研究發現,這一政策在提升香港學校系統教育質量與效率的同時,可能導致社會階層差距擴大等教育不公平問題。政府未來採用教育財政手段、政府政策制度及政府輔助型服務等干預方式對現有的"直接資助學校計劃"進行改進和完善,在提升香港地區基礎教育的質量與效率的同時,確保教育公平。

This paper provides a brief overview of current educational evaluation measures and related issues in Hong Kong. The foci of measures for discussion are quality assurance mechanisms especially school self-evaluation (SSE) and external school review (ESR), and Territory-wide System Assessment (TSA). Three questions are posed for discussion: (a) How can we promote coherence among educational reform (highlighting students' whole-person development) and educational supervision and evaluation policies (stressing academic performances) in both rhetoric and practice (b) How can we promote a systematic linkage between centralized systems (ESR, SSE, BCA/TSA) and localized systems (teacher evaluation) so as to drive school improvement/effectiveness and teacher development/effectiveness (c) How can we help relieve teachers' workload and anxieties linked with educational evaluation and foster a shared community of educational evaluation among government agencies, SSB/SMC/IMC and teachers. Copyright © 2009 by Nova Science Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved.

Aims: This study examines the principles and practices in term of functional analysis for managing records at secondary schools in Hong Kong as recommended by the ISO9001 requirement. Set up by the Geneva-based International Organisation for Standardisation, the ISO9001 addresses the requirements that schools, or any other form of organisation intending to meet the standard, must fulfil. Schools in Hong Kong are required to adhere to the education quality assurance (QA) policy, which emphasises a school’s accountability to the wider community and the development of school education in Hong Kong. The policy requires schools to collect data that can be used to report on the effectiveness of school education and to provide documents for scrutiny by government officials. In response to this (QA) policy, schools in Hong Kong have to manage their records effectively. Record management, as one of the administrative principles in schools, ensures that accurate information of all school activities is kept and can facilitate an effective and evidence-based, decision-making process. Identifying taxonomy and management practices for effective documentation in schools can support planning; assist with organising the continuity of improvement plans; and increase reporting and accountability to the public. Methodology: This study examines the records management model using a case study that focuses on the experience of implementing records management and knowledge management at school. The case study is a secondary school in Hong Kong which has adopted the ISO standard and is implementing knowledge management. The researcher conducted a series of qualitative interviews at a secondary school, where the ISO 9001 certification had been introduced. The study explores how the records were managed and classified. Findings: The results show that the case school adopted a hybrid top-down and bottom-up approach to record management, to facilitate decision making and managing knowledge

This paper examines the relevance of hybridization to the development of higher education (HE) governance in Hong Kong. It begins by briefly reviewing conceptual issues about HE governance. Based on these conceptual elements, an analytical framework is then proposed to understand the institutional balance of power in university systems and the cultural equilibrium in the academia. Afterwards, an overview of the key features of HE governance in Hong Kong is presented. Three controversial incidents involving the individual academic freedom and institutional autonomy of universities that occurred in Hong Kong after 1997 are also studied. Given that these incidents are linked with the social and political changes in postcolonial Hong Kong, the controversial incidents and associated confrontations in the university sector are regarded as signals of an ongoing hybridization process in the city. Such a process indicates a continued East–West cultural divide in the arenas of HE governance and academic culture.
[Copyright © 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.]