Hong Kong education reform continues, but Beijing’s role presents new challenges

Katherine Forestier reflects on 20 years of education reform in Hong Kong which has had its successes, despite pressures over cost of living, minorities, special needs students and other concerns. Challenges remain, however, particularly meeting demands from students, parents – and mainland China

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Katherine Forestier

Published: 9:01am, 4 Feb 2018Updated: 5:27pm, 4 Feb 2018

In 2018, we should look back and celebrate the progress of the past 20 years, seek to understand the limitations and their causes, and move forward with realistic expectations. Illustration: Craig Stephens

The launch of Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor’s sweeping review of the education system has, arguably, brought to a close the era of extraordinary reform unleashed two decades ago when Hong Kong departed from British rule.

Eight government-appointed task forces, reviewing curriculum, assessment, teachers’ professional development, school-based management, parent education and elements of post-secondary education and research, are now being convened. We all have an interest in their recommendations.

Standing on the edge of this new stage of reform, it is easy to forget how, since 1997, key features of the education system have already changed drastically. This includes the end of entrance tests for primary and secondary school; new curriculums and exams; the development of teacher and leadership training; school management reform; and the expansion of post-secondary education, to name but a few.

All this culminated in 2009 with the biggest change of all, the phasing in of a new academic structure – the so-called “3+3+4”, of three years each of junior and senior secondary education, followed by four years of university. Out went the Hong Kong Certificate of Education and Advanced Level exams modelled on British equivalents, and in came the single Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education.

In 2016, the first university students graduated from this system, completing the long implementation of changes envisaged in the Education Commission’s 2000 blueprint, “Learning for Life, Learning Through Life”, and acclaimed internationally as one of the best models of reform for the cycles of the consultation, planning, implementation, review and fine-tuning involved.

Despite battles fought over many of the changes, this was a massive achievement because, for the first time, all students could complete senior secondary schooling, instead of a minority, and all could enjoy a curriculum that embodied enlightened principles gleaned from systems internationally, moulded to the local context. And with policies that promoted the expansion of tertiary education, pathways were established that enabled all to achieve higher levels of academic or practical learning.