Chi Chung LAM
Visiting Professor
Curriculum, Teaching and Learning AG,
NIE
To answer this question
 What are the changes?
 What are the outcomes?
 Sustainability of the system?
The changes
 Curriculum
 Educational and school management
 New academic structure (334 reform)
The change: Curriculum
 Learning to learn
 whole-person
development
 life-long learning
 emphasis: generic skills
 life-wide learning
Generic skills
 Collaboration skills
 Communication skills
 Creativity
 Critical thinking skills
 Information technology skills
 Numeracy skills
 Problem-solving skills
 Self-management skills
 Study skills
4 key means
 moral and civic education
 reading to learn
 project learning
 information technology for
interactive learning
The changes
 Education and school management:
 Accountability and managerialism

Hold schools and teachers accountable for their work
 Quality assurance review/ school review
 Opening up information of school and school performance
 Participation of the public (parents, alumni, and the public) in
school management
 Induce competition among schools
 Territory-wide System Assessment (P3, P6 & S3)
 These scores + School Certificate exam and A-level exam
results: value added figures)
Academic structure: 334 reform
 2004: first proposed
 2005: decided to move ahead
 2009: implementation at S4
 334 reform: change in academic structure
 From 3.2.2.3 to 3.3.4


i.e. 3 years (lower sec), 2 years (upper sec), 2 years (sixth form/JC), 3
years (undergraduate)
To 3 years (lower sec), 3 years (upper sec), 4 years (undergraduate)
 Only one public examination at the end of secondary
education

The old system: two exam: school cert (O level) and A-level
 12 year: free education
 The importance of education in the eyes of the parents
AND
 The high level of economic devt:
 Virtually all students will stay in school after 9 years of
compulsory education
The major challenge
 Catering for individual differences
 Individual differences among students: widening with
age (Review of 9 year compulsory education, 1998)
 The extension of senior secondary education from 2
years to 3 years: means most students will stay on for
one more year.

Old system: only 40% of the O-level students could proceed to
A-level
Strategies
 No streaming
 All students: 4 core subjects
 English, Chinese, Mathematics & Liberal Studies
 Electives: 1-3 traditional academic subjects
 And/Or Applied Learning subjects
What are the impacts of the
education reform?
 Students’ learning outcomes
 PISA: 2000, 2003, 2006, 2009
2000
 Overall, Hong Kong students performed well compared with
students in most other countries, ranking first in mathematics,
third in science, and sixth in reading among the participating
countries. Hong Kong got 560 on the mathematical literacy
scale1 , outperforming all the other participating countries
significantly except Japan (557) and Korea (547). Hong Kong
scored 541 on the scientific literacy scale. Only Korea (552) and
Japan (550) performed better than Hong Kong among all the
participating countries, but the differences were not statistically
significant. On the combined reading scale, Hong Kong
obtained a score of 525. Only one country, Finland (546),
performed significantly better than Hong Kong. In reading,
Canada, New Zealand, Australia and Ireland also performed
better than Hong Kong, but the differences were not statistically
significant.
2003
2006 Science
 Finland, with an average of 563 score points, was the
highest-performing country
 Six other high-scoring countries had mean scores of
530 to 542 points: Canada, Japan and New Zealand and
the partner countries/economies Hong Kong-China,
Chinese Taipei and Estonia.
2006 Reading
 Korea, with 556 score points, was the highest-performing country in
reading. Finland followed second with 547 points and the partner
economy Hong Kong-China third with 536 points.
 Across the OECD area, reading performance generally remained flat between
PISA 2000 and PISA 2006.
 However, two OECD countries (Korea and Poland) and five partner
countries/economies (Chile, Liechtenstein, Indonesia, Latvia and Hong KongChina) have seen significant rises in reading performance since PISA 2000.
Korea increased its reading performance between PISA 2000 and PISA 2006 by
31 score points, mainly by raising performance standards among the better
performing students.
 Hong Kong-China has increased its reading performance by 11 score points
since 2000.
2006 Mathematics
 Finland and Korea, and the partners Chinese Taipei
and Hong Kong-China, outperformed all other
countries/economies in PISA 2006.
2009 PISA
 Hong Kong:
 Ranking
 Reading : 4th
 Math: 3rd
 Science: 3rd
 Not only PISA, PIRLS also showed students have
improved in reading competency
 The 4 key areas: i.e. IT, reading, project…
 Implemented
 More new school-based curriculum initiatives, in
particular in primary schools
 Classroom teaching:
 More student-centred methods used
Preface to the Progress report on
the Edu Reform (4), Dec., 2006
 The Education Reform is a mammoth and complex task.
Reform proposals spanned across areas which are
interrelated. Adjustments in one area may have significant
impact on other areas. Changes will inevitably give rise to
anxiety, difficulties and challenges. In implementing the
reform initiatives, our educators have worked diligently
with devotion and commitment. Expected improvements
are now gradually taking place in teaching and learning in
schools. Our efforts are bearing fruits. The Education and
Manpower Bureau and the education sector seem to have
sailed through the most difficult period in the
establishment of rapport and partnership.
 Arthur Li (Secretary for Education and Manpower), 2006
 So, isn’t the answer to the topic of the presentation
very obvious?
 But: outcomes of a change:
 More than students’ learning outcomes
 See for example, Stake’s countenance approach &
Stufflebeam’s CIPP model
 Let’s look at three phenomena before making the final
verdict
Pressure on teachers
23
 Pressure on teachers: increasing
 Overwork: a committee was set up in 2006 to look into
the matter
 But still very heavy
 Not only teachers, principals also face similar problem
 Getting more and more difficult to attract quality
young graduates to the profession
 Teachers’: loss their sense of professional satisfaction
 They complained that they had been pushed to take
up many “non-edu” work
 Ho, Y.F. (2006)
Intensified pressure in secondary
schools
 The introduction of new senior secondary schools
 Upset the ecology in schools
 The introduction of Liberal Studies as a compulsory
subject: a redundancy of teachers in all subjects
 Teachers: have to be retrained to take up LS

If each school needs 8 teachers, nearly 4000 teachers have to
be retrained
What is LS?
A transdisciplinary subject
6 units: from three areas:
 Self and personal development
 Personal development and interpersonal relationships
 Society and culture
 Hong Kong Toady
 Modern China
 Globalisation
 Science, technology and the environment
 Public Health
 Energy technology & the Environment
27
Use contemporary issues
as a platform to:
• study contemporary
events not covered by
any single disciplines
(Awareness)
• expand knowledge &
perspectives beyond
single disciplines
(Broadening)
• connect knowledge and
concepts across
different disciplines
(Connecting & Critical
thinking)
Chinese
Language
English
Language
X1
Issues in
Liberal Studies
Other Learning
Experiences
Mathematics
X2
X3
28
Liberal Studies
 Not only subject content knowledge
 Also new pedagogy: issue-based enquiry learning



Centred around generic skills
Multiple perspectives
Values teaching
 Assessed in public examination
 Independent Enquiry Study: school-based assessment
29
 Lam & Chan (2011) find:
 Schools find it difficult to cope with LS
 Attempt to scale it down
 For example


Assign two or even six teachers to teach one class
Independent inquiry study: students are given a limited
choice of topics
 Teachers’ morale and subject identity crisis
 As good subject teachers are assigned to teach LS, the
devt of other subjects is adversely affected
The backwash effect of TSA
 Performance of students in TSA (P3, P6 & S3) counts
 The data: used to judge and monitor schools’
performance
 Back to drill and practice
 a search of the Commercial Press on 31 March, 2011: 125
exercise books for TSA, mostly for P.3 and P.6
 http://www.cp1897.com.hk/simple_search_result.php?display_type=simpl
eness&page=1&number_per_page=15&sort_type=&simple_words=%E5%85
%A8%E6%B8%AF%E6%80%A7%E7%B3%BB%E7%B5%B1%E8%A9%95%
E4%BC%B0&is_cpStore=
Are we going too far?