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Review of Education System: Framework for Education Reform

22 November 1999

Education Commission Secretariat
Room 714, Central Government Offices
(Main Wing)
Lower Albert Road, Central
Hong Kong

Dear Sirs,

Review of Education System: Framework for Education Reform

We generally welcome the Framework put forward by the Education Commission as Stage 2 of the Review of the Education System. In particularly, we welcome the proposals to:

• Cultivate a positive attitude towards learning and
• Promote the "life-wide Learning" concept.

We believe that the Review Initiative has been most valuable in stimulating debate within the community on our educational system, and, it seems, fostering a consensus that the system is in serious need of reform.

However, we would emphasise that Stage 3, on measures to implement the high level objectives of Stage 2, may prove very problematic. In our view there is a complex of interrelated deep-seated problems within the education system that will require tremendous effort over an extended period of time to address. Problems that may prove particularly intractable include the following:

• Parental attitudes, such as the insistence on tests, rote learning, cramming, and evaluation of achievement purely in terms of examination marks.
• Low levels of qualification in the teaching profession; lack of experience of modern teaching methods.
• The system of banding schools.
• Dependence of the school sector on Government funding, i.e. the relative lack, and low status, of private schools.
• Broader cultural factors such as deference to authority and respect for conformance rather than initiative.
• The misallocation of resources across the educational sectors, i.e. the over-allocation to tertiary at the expense of pre-school, primary and secondary, resulting, e.g. in shared sites.

In our view, some of the cultural issues will take a generation or more to really resolve, if indeed they can be resolved at all. We would therefore recommend a realistic appraisal of the difficulties; and we would envisage that solutions will have to be of a long term and fundamental nature. There may not be many "quick wins" in reforming our system.

Finally, we would like to make two suggestions of detail which did not appear to be covered in your paper.

1. We would like to see some emphasis being put on setting up a governance system that enables various stakeholders in education (e.g. teachers, school principals and parents groups) to participate in the reform process. A stronger "Parent-Teacher Council" at the school level might well be the answer. Such a system is a modest move and it is entirely in line with the "Society-wide Mobilisation" concept put forward by the Review.
2. In our last submission to the Education Commission, we mentioned the apparent "…lack of interest in the technical and engineering education area". We would like to point out the many benefits of working closely with the private sector in providing "Apprenticeship Schemes" to students in the vocational, engineering and IT areas while they’re still attending schools or universities.

I hope the above comments have been useful.

Sincerely yours,

Alan LUNG Ka-lun
Chairman