To realise the Chief Executive’s vision of Hong Kong becoming a world-class city with a thriving economy and culturally rich society it is necessary to cultivate and retain a critical mass of talented people. With this in mind Mr Tung Chee-hwa made education reform a key issue of this year’s Policy Address.

Currently, the Education Commission (EC) is conducting a comprehensive review of the education system in Hong Kong. It is now at the end of stage two of the review where it is setting about forming a framework for education reform. This round of consultation will last until December 15, after which it will come up with educational reform proposals. The Bulletin spoke to key people from the EC, and outsiders, for their views on the reform.

Kindergarten education
Mr Tai Hay Lap, Principal of Yan Oi Tong Tin Ka Ping Secondary School, and a member of the Commission, said the main theme for reforming kindergarten education was to cultivate a positive attitude to learning and good living habits amongst pupils.

"Presently kindergartens exert too much pressure on students - we need to abolish this. We want to cultivate curiosity and interest in learning among kindergarten children, not to destroy them with too much rote learning," he said.

One of the problems is that the selection process of primary schools is too stringent, often involving entrance examinations, so there is pressure on kindergartens to drill pre-school students to pass these examinations.

To solve this the EC may consider banning entrance examinations into primary schools - this would therefore reduce the pressure on kindergartens to drill students.

The Education Commission also proposes to set up a stronger parent-teacher association network.

"This will act as a quality assurance framework and performance indicator of kindergartens. Class size and qualifications of teachers will be published to increase transparency of pre-school education," he said.

By September 2002 all kindergarten teachers must have completed a Certificate in Kindergarten Education.

"This should improve the quality of teaching. However, the profession does not attract the best people because of the low pay. Another area we are also looking at is to improve the interface between kindergarten and primary schools," he said.

Primary and secondary education
Mr Tai said the main problem with present primary education is that after primary three, the performance gap between good and bad students increases.

"We are finding ways to close the gap by changing the curriculum and introducing Core Competency Assessments to replace the Aptitude Assessment Test, which will cover learning in Chinese, Maths and English. Later general studies and science might be added," he said.

This Web-based, user-friendly test will not be related to banding or secondary school admission, it will simply be a test for teachers to determine the strengths and weaknesses of each pupil."

This follows one of the major principles of the reform which is to eradicate dead-end screening that blocks further learning opportunities.

"Everyone should be given the opportunity to learn anywhere, any time and to be given recognition in what they achieve," he said.

Many parents and teachers are worried that by abolishing the examination system, standards will be lowered.

"We don’t believe this will happen. We just want to make the exam system more comprehensive instead of using one high-stake examination," he said.

The main thrust of the primary school reform is to eliminate by stages, all pupil assessments and banding systems for the purpose of allocating secondary school places, so that the nine year universal basic education process will become one through train.

"This will enable students to engage in various learning activities that will benefit their all-round development. Banding students at an early stage is a very negative labeling system that lowers their self esteem, making them unwilling to learn," he said.

The through train would mean that primary and secondary schools would be linked so that all pupils that started at a primary school will have places allocated for them in a linked secondary school.

"There will be no need for banding and the Aptitude Assessment Test. Primary and secondary schools will be linked through their district sponsoring body," he said.

Mr Tai said that if this ‘though train’ was to succeed all ‘trains’ must be made more equal.

"We hope to achieve this by making higher education more accessible so any children can further their learning through tertiary education, no matter what primary and secondary school they went to," he said.

If the through train comes to fruition the only admission process would be entrance into primary school – and that will also undergo reform.

"We want to base primary school admission simply on residential location, not on family background. The quality of the through train should not depend on the family background or socio-economic status of the students but on whether that school provides quality education. At the moment, some schools’ reputations rely on them getting the best students from the best backgrounds and not on providing quality education," he said.

Ms Diana Wong, Principle of St Paul’s Secondary School, said the idea of a ‘through train’ was already practiced at her school (one of the ‘top’ schools) and many others.

"Out of 200 places for admission to our secondary school we only have discretionary choice of 10 places, the rest are filled by our feeder primary school and government-allocated places. Of course we select students according to their academic standard, certainly not their socio-economic status.

"The whole idea of the through train, where banding and formal tests are eliminated should be treated with caution. The Government should not want to pull down all schools into a quagmire of mediocrity. If some schools are at the top-end of the spectrum they should be kept that way and the poorer schools should be improved," she said.

Ms Wong does not agree that students are any worse or better off if they are banded and hence labeled.

"Banding is just a way of classifying students to their ability," she said.

Ms Wong thinks the main thing wrong with the primary and secondary education system is the vast amount of content in the syllabus.

"Students are too busy trying to remember the whole syllabus so they do not appreciate what they’re learning and this does not motivate them to learn more. If teachers had more time [with a reduced syllabus] they could teach students how to learn which would contribute to life-long learning.

"The ECs framework of promoting life-long learning is all very vague, what you need is a carefully considered plan, so that teachers know how to achieve the goals set out by the EC," she said.

Tertiary education
Prof Cheng Kai-ming, Pro-Vice-Chancellor of the University of Hong Kong and a member of the EC, said that one of the principles of reform on higher and tertiary education is to promote life-long learning.

"We want to promote knowledge renewal among people. Often what you learn in school or university is not always what you do in your job and often you are likely to change jobs," he said.

In Hong Kong there are already 650,000 part-time students on adult learning courses. The total expenditure of this is $5 billion and it is expected to increase to $9 billion by next year.

"Although these figures are very encouraging we do have a problem of restricted university places in Hong Kong. Only 21 per cent of all university-aged students are at formal university. Seven per cent are on non-degree courses. So in total about 30 per cent of university-aged students are in higher education," he said.

This does not compare well with Singapore where 60 per cent of students go on to higher education and the US, where the figure is 70 per cent.

"Our motto is that everyone who aspires to higher education should have access to it," he said.

The EC hopes to expand tertiary education in three areas; in traditional universities, through open learning and through the creation of community colleges.

"The community colleges will be a second route to a degree, where students can acquire vocational qualifications and matriculate enough to go onto a degree course," he said.

Under the reform Prof Cheng said that universities and community colleges would offer less specialisation and more generic vocational learning experience.

"We hope to include vocational experience, community service and sports as part of the reform so that students will receive a more well-rounded higher education," he said.

This will also involve a move away from ‘terminal’ training at universities.

"Many law students do not always end up in the legal profession. We want first degrees to be transferable under a credit unit system and portable across all universities, and non-formal institutions," he said.

Prof Cheng also said that university admission relies too heavily on A level results.

"We want to change the way universities allocate places so that it isn’t so exam oriented so that students who are not academically talented, but have talents in other areas can go to university," he said.

Prof Cheng said that Singapore, Taiwan, China and the western countries had more realistic and flexible education systems.

"We have conducted in-depth study into other education systems to come up with a reform framework for Hong Kong," he said.

The business community’s view
Mr Irving Koo of the Business Coalition on Education (BCE) and member of the EC, said that the coalition was an important forum through which views of the business sector could be expressed and channeled to Government.

One of the BCE’s concerns is the falling standard of English among students.

"In the top five per cent of the population the standard of English is good, but below that the standard is falling. The problem is that 98 per cent of the population do not use it," he said.

However, Mr Koo said that the use of mother-tongue learning in classrooms was not the problem.

"The average schoolteacher is not good at English so forcing them to teach in English decreases the quality of teaching – what is needed in native English language teachers in schools as well as multi-media learning centres," he said.

Multi-media learning is done through computer-aided teaching whereby students are monitored by teachers and have access to the Internet to work on projects.

Another area Mr Koo said that today’s students are lacking was in their motivation and commitment to themselves and the community.

"This can be tackled by school-business partnerships whereby students can learn through temporary work placements and people of a senior management level can come into schools and talk to students about the ‘real’ world," he said

Mr Koo said that Hong Kong education needed to catch up with the 21^st century.