Education Reform and the Quest for Excellence : The Hong Kong Story [1 ed.] 9789882201156, 9789622097452

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Quest for Excellence

and the The Hong Kong Story

“The editors, Lok Sang Ho, Paul Morris and Yue-ping Chung are to be congratulated on producing a volume which is both hard-hitting and insightful about education reforms in Hong Kong. The range of experiences of the contributing authors contribute to a most interesting mix of perspectives about education reform. The focus is squarely on Hong Kong, in terms of general policy and reform issues, followed by more specific chapters dealing with issues of graduate teachers, English as a medium of instruction, and the role of the media. However, the issues raised are very applicable to many countries. This book is a valuable contribution to the literature on education reform.” – Professor Colin J. Marsh, Curtin University, Perth, Western Australia

Lok Sang Ho is a professor in the Department of Economics and Director of the Centre for Public Policy Studies at Lingnan University. His research interests encompass education, labour markets, social security, health policy, housing policy, macroeconomic policy, and international monetary system.

Yue-ping Chung is a professor in the Department of Educational Administration and Policy, and former Dean of Education at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. His research areas include efficiency and equity issues in educational development. Education ISBN 962-209-745-6

www.hkupress.org

9 789622 097452

Ho, Morris and Chung

Paul Morris is President of the Hong Kong Institute of Education. He was Chair Professor in education at the University of Hong Kong for many years, and has widely published on education policy, curriculum development, and comparative policy.

The Hong Kong Story

This book investigates and analyses critical issues in education reform and discusses possible pitfalls in the current global drive to promote excellence. Instead of documenting the successes and frustrations encountered by education reformers in specific jurisdictions, this book aims to offer directions for education reformers, and sets out to be prescriptive rather than descriptive. While the cases covered here are focused on Hong Kong, they are no less useful in throwing light upon the direction of education reform all over the world. The first section of the volume, ‘Conceptual Framework’, provides the theoretical underpinnings for the design and implementation of education reform. The next two sections, ‘Reform of Tertiary Education’ and ‘Experiments, Dilemmas, and Risks in Secondary Schools’ look at reform at the tertiary and secondary levels in greater detail. The final section, ‘Ideals vs. Reality: the Interplay of Diverse Interests and Diverse Perceptions’, looks at the conflicting goals and perceptions of different ‘stakeholders’, with a concluding chapter that summarizes the main lessons to be learnt. This book will be of interest to scholars, educators, parents, policymakers, politicians, and all who are concerned about our younger generation and their future.

Education Reform and the Quest for Excellence

Education Reform

HONG KONG UNIVERSITY PRESS

Education Reform S Quest for Excellence

Hong Kong University Press thanks Xu Bing for writing the Press's name in his Square Word Calligraphy for the covers of its books. For further information, see p. iv.

Education Reform jg.' Quest Iw Excellence The Hong Kong

Story

Edited by Lok Sang Ho, Paul Morris and Yue-ping Chung

# m *, * & m *t H O N G KONG UNIVERSITY PRESS

Hong Kong University Press 14/F Hing Wai Centre 7 Tin Wan Praya Road Aberdeen Hong Kong © Hong Kong University Press 2005 ISBN 962 209 745 6

All rights reserved. No portion of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Secure On-line Ordering http://www.hkupress.org British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Printed and bound by Liang Yau Printing Factory Co. Ltd., in Hong Kong, China

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i &?

Hong Kong University Press is honoured that Xu Bing, whose art explores the complex themes of language across cultures, has written the Press's name in his Square Word Calligraphy. This signals our commitment to cross-cultural thinking and the distinctive nature of our English-language books published in China. "At first glance, Square Word Calligraphy appears to be nothing more unusual than Chinese characters, but in fact it is a new way of rendering English words in the format of a square so they resemble Chinese characters. Chinese viewers expect to be able to read Square word Calligraphy but cannot. Western viewers, however are surprised to find they can read it. Delight erupts when meaning is unexpectedly revealed." — Britta Erickson, The Art ofXu Bing

Contents

Preface

vii

Contributors

ix

1

Driving for Excellence: An Introduction to the Volume Lok Sang Ho, Paul Morris and Yue-ping Chung

PART I

CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORKS

1

7

2

Education Reform: A Socio-Economic Perspective Lok Sang Ho

9

3

Education Policymaking in a Disarticulated System Ian Scott

23

PART II

REFORM OF TERTIARY EDUCATION

37

4

The Way to Build World-Class Universities Lok Sang Ho

39

5

Sub-Degrees and the 60 Percent Post-Secondary Target Charles Wong

51

6

Reforming the University Admission System in Singapore: Lessons for Hong Kong Jason Tan

63

vi

Contents

PART III

EXPERIMENTS, DILEMMAS, AND RISKS IN SECONDARY SCHOOL REFORM

81

7

Education Reform and Policy Implementation in Hong Kong Paul Morris and Ian Scott

83

8

Quality Education in Hong Kong: The Anomalies of Managerialism and Marketization Thomas Kwan-choi Tse

99

PART IV 9

IDEALS VERSUS REALITY: THE INTERPLAY OF DIVERSE INTERESTS AND DIVERSE PERCEPTIONS

Implementation of Graduate Teacher Policy in Hong Kong Primary Schools: Promises and Disillusionment Kwok-chan Lai, Kwok-wai Ko and Elizabeth Lai-man Cheung

125 127

10 The Best Students Will Learn English: Ultra-Utilitarianism and Linguistic Imperialism in Education in Post-1997 Hong Kong Po-king Choi

147

11 Colonialism and the Politics of Chinese History in Hong Kong's Schools Edward Vickers, Flora Kan and Paul Morris

171

12 Between Egalitarianism and Elitism: Media Perception of Education Reform in Post-1997 Hong Kong Chi-kuen Lau

191

13 Education Reform in Hong Kong: What Are the Lessons? Lok Sang Ho

217

Notes

223

References

231

Index

249

Preface

This book is about education reform, which is today a centre of attention for governments all over the world. The reason is simple: education is important, and a good education system makes a difference. In an increasingly globalized world, governments everywhere believe that, to stay ahead of the competition, they have to fix their education systems. This book is intended for a wide audience. However, its focus is on Hong Kong. This can be justified by the fact that Hong Kong is distinctive in having experienced an inordinate number of education reform initiatives in the past 30 years and these have been substantially influenced by global patterns and trends. This history of education reform, regrettably, though rich in diversity and driven by much theorizing, is not altogether successful. But, given the universal nature of many problems education reformers have to face, it has important lessons not only for Hong Kong, but also for the rest of the world. This book is also about excellence. Excellence is the buzz word of today: excellence in science and technology, excellence in management and communication skills, excellence at the bargaining table, excellence in marketing. But all these skills do not mean much if people are themselves miserable. So even more important than such job-related skills, and skills that enhance "competitiveness," societies need to nurture people with stamina, people who are committed to making the most out of their lives, people who enjoy a sustained sense of success because they do the very best they can in all the things they do, and not because they manage to stay ahead of others. Education must help people live a happy, fulfilled life. Education will not be successful if it increases people's misery and reduces people's happiness. Excellence must mean more than enhancing competitiveness in the commercial world. Only when education helps build a happier, stronger community can it be called excellent.

viii

Preface

We hope that this present volume will throw light on how a country should reform its education system, and that it will alert education reformers of the potential pitfalls and difficulties that they will inevitably encounter. The Editors August 2005

Contributors

Elizabeth Lai-man CHEUNG is a senior secondary school teacher. Previously, she was a senior curriculum officer at the Curriculum Development Institute of the Education D e p a r t m e n t . H e r research focuses on t e a c h e r s ' understanding of their careers and biology education. Po-king CHOI is an associate professor at the Department of Educational Administration and Policy, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. She teaches sociology of education, sexuality education and ethnographical studies in education. Her research interests include educational policy studies, women's history and Hong Kong studies. Yue-ping CHUNG is Professor at the Faculty of Education, the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He holds a Ph.D. from Stanford University. Lok Sang HO is Professor of Economics and Director of the Center for Public Policy Studies at Lingnan University, Hong Kong. He has research interests in a range of public policy issues including education, health, housing, social security, labour markets, as well as monetary and fiscal policy. He is the author of Principles of Public Policy Practice (Kluwer Academic Publishers). Flora KAN is an assistant professor at the Department of Curricular and Educational Studies at the University of Hong Kong. She teaches and publishes in history pedagogy generally, and curriculum studies specifically. Kwok-wai KO is a senior lecturer at the Hong Kong Institute of Education's Department of Educational Policy and Administration. His present research focuses on teacher compensation, teacher demand and supply, teaching as a profession, and school leadership. Kwok-chan LAI is Head of Strategic and Academic Planning at the Hong Kong Institute of Education. His research interests include teacher demand and supply, the attractiveness of teaching as a career, international trends in teacher education, and contextual factors that influence institutional development.

x

Contributors

Chi-kuen LAU is Executive Editor (News) and formerly Education Writer of the Hong Kong English-language newspaper, the South China Morning Post. He holds a master's degree in journalism from the University of Minnesota. Paul MORRIS is President of the Hong Kong Institute of Education. His research interests and publications focus on issues relating to education policy, curriculum development and comparative education. Ian SCOTT taught at the University of Hong Kong from 1976 to 1995 and held the position of Chair Professor in the Department of Politics and Public Administration. Subsequently, he held the Chair of Politics and Government at Murdoch University, Australia. He is currently Emeritus Professor in Politics at Murdoch University and a visiting professor at the University of Hong Kong. Jason TAN is Associate Professor in Policy and Leadership Studies at the National Institute of Education, Singapore. He has a doctorate in comparative education from the State University of New York at Buffalo. Among his latest publications is Globalization and Marketization in Education: A Comparative Analysis of Hong Kong and Singapore (co-authored with Ka-ho Mok). Thomas Kwan-choi TSE is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Administration and Policy at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. He teaches and publishes in the fields of civic education, youth studies, and sociology of education. His current research focuses on civic education in Chinese societies as well as recent education reforms in Hong Kong. Charles WONG is currently Director of the School of Continuing and Professional Education, City University of Hong Kong. He was formerly Chairman of the Working Group on Continuing Education of the Education Commission (2000-2002) and Chairman of the Federation for Continuing Education in Tertiary Institutions (2000-2002). He received a Medal of Honour in 2003 from the Hong Kong SAR Government, for his contribution to the development of continuing education and the promotion of lifelong learning in Hong Kong. Edward VICKERS is a lecturer in Comparative Education at the Institute of Education, University of London. His main research interest is in history education in East Asia, and Hong Kong in particular. He also writes English language and history teaching materials for use in mainland China and Hong Kong.

1 Driving for Excellence: An Introduction to the Volume Lok Sang Ho, Paul Morris and Yue-ping Chung

The forces of globalization and the rapid advance of science and technology have prompted governments all over the world to introduce a plethora of reforms to their education systems in the hope that they will make their respective workforces and economies more productive and competitive. There is little doubt that the already keen and intense competition we have seen in the past decade will only get keener and more intense in the years to come. The winners will be those who excel in this highly competitive environment. Hong Kong, long opened to the winds of globalization, is beyond doubt under much pressure to shape up and partake in this global drive for excellence. However, how does education reform enhance a country's competitiveness and what do we mean by excellence? For whom is "excellence" intended? Education, in general, can enhance two kinds of skills: job skills and life skills. A knowledge-based, market-driven economy requires its workers to be well equipped in information technology skills, engineering skills, marketing skills, negotiating skills, presentation skills, and other professional skills. But life skills may be even more important, for it is life skills that determine if someone will endure, if he can face adversities, and if he is going to be a happy person or an unhappy person. Life skills are skills in communication, emotionmanagement, time management, reflective skills, interpersonal skills, organizational skills, general skills to learn and to adapt and, gaining in importance by the day, sheer stamina; the capacity to persevere and to fight against all odds relentlessly. People with excellent life skills are confident, strong, and adaptive. Witness the number of titles released on EQ (emotional quotient, and then empathy quotient), AQ (adversity quotient, and then autism quotient), SQ (spiritual intelligence, and then system quotient), and so on. The proliferation of various "quotients" related to personality and traits is not entirely a fad.1 There is indeed more to education than knowledge and traditional job-related skills. Will the current waves of education reform enhance these generic skills in the way they plan to do? Will education reform achieve its various goals and enhance the effectiveness of education? The fact .

2

Lok Sang Ho, Paul Morris and Yue-ping Chung

is, apart from being happier persons, which is admittedly quite important, often times it is people with stamina and endurance who finally out-compete others in the long run. Even more important, will education increase the chances of skilled people using their skills in socially productive work? The recent revelation about the lack of business ethics in America's corporate sector through the Enron and WorldCom debacles, which must have prevailed for over a decade, suggests that while creative accounting and innovative financial engineering may spur investment and drive economic growth for a time, such growth is of low quality, cannot be sustained, and ultimately exacts a heavy price on society. Because it exacts a heavy price on the entire society and even humanity it could be considered as the very opposite of "excellence." Education must not just produce knowledgeable and skilled people, but should produce people with integrity. Better still, education should nurture a new generation, and future generations, of people who care about the wider interests of society. Indeed, as Pritchett (2001) put it so aptly, we do not need highly knowledgeable and skillful pirates. The fact that knowledgeable and educated people engage in activities that make private gains at the expense of society at large is one possible reason why any statistical link between education and economic growth seems to be weak (Pritchett, 2001). Thus, increasingly, voices are raised which fundamentally question the role and value of education as a source of economic growth (Wolf, 2002), especially as societies extend the provision of tertiary education to more and more people. The present volume is unique in that we want not so much to document the frustrations and difficulties faced by education reformers in specific jurisdictions or how they succeed in their endeavours but to throw light on how education reform should proceed. In this, we set out to offer some directions for education reformers. We intend to warn education reformers against possible pitfalls and false guideposts. The volume sets out to be prescriptive more than descriptive. The issues faced by education reformers all over the world are strikingly similar. The reasons are obvious: education deals with people; there are diverse interests among people; people are sensitive to risks and incentives; there are market failures and government failures; there are political and information constraints, and so on. For these reasons, while the cases covered in this volume are focused on Hong Kong, they are no less useful in throwing light on the direction of education reform all over the world. It is important to note that the nature of reform has now gone far beyond the expansion of each level of schooling. The past 30 years have seen the provision of universal access to primary schooling across much of the world, and even secondary and tertiary education have become much more accessible in many countries. Education reforms in the new millennium have increasingly focused on promoting quality, rather than quantity. This is as it should be,

Driving for Excellence: An Introduction to the Volume

3

for "excellence" refers to quality, not quantity. However, because quantities are far easier to observe than quality, there is still a tendency to emphasize quantitative measures such as the number of teachers with university and higher degrees, the number of teachers with training in a specific category of education, and enrolment figures. Without the education reformers being aware of it, the drive for excellence easily degenerates into a pursuit of the m u n d a n e and of mediocrity. Teachers with university degrees are not necessarily better than teachers without them if university enrolment expands faster than the number of well qualified applicants. University professors with more refereed journal articles published are not necessarily better teachers and can be poor role models for the younger generation if they have lost interest in serving society or in addressing local needs. On a more macro scale, there may be too much emphasis on the quantity of economic growth to the neglect of the quality ofgrowth. As alluded to earlier, clever financial engineering and innovative accounting may result in an increase in perceived wealth and boost economic growth in the short term but such growth is of low quality and may not be sustained. Moreover, abundant evidence shows that child mortality rates tend to be lower if the education level of the mother is higher, suggesting that education may enhance the quality of life without necessarily raising the measured rate of economic growth. We may well look for the value of education beyond the traditional terms of reference, which are too narrowly focused on economic growth and market-driven values, and we will do well to evaluate the success of education reform from a broader perspective. The authors of the papers in this volume come from diverse backgrounds, and include economists, political scientists, a journalist, and education scholars whose specializations cover education administration, curriculum reform, and education policy. They analyze a range of key issues, from the nature of valueadded in education to the dynamics of curriculum reform, from what makes an effective education reform strategy to the role of public perceptions and the mass media. Their substantive discussions both reflect and question the thinking of policy makers. Without knowing it, the way education reforms are taking shape throughout the world is also changing the value system of our younger generations, and how they will use their skills in the future. For clarity of argument, apart from the Introduction, the book is divided into four separate, but inter-related parts: (i) Conceptual Frameworks; (ii) Reform of Tertiary Education; (iii) Experiments, Dilemmas, and Risks in Secondary School Reform; and (iv) Ideals Versus Reality: The Interplay of Diverse Interests and Diverse Perceptions. U n d e r the "Conceptual Frameworks" section, Lok Sang Ho's chapter outlines the nature of the valueadded concept in education, and scrutinizes the aspects of institutions and practice that affect the efficiency of education p r o d u c t i o n , namely examinations and assessment, drilling and creativity, autonomy and professionalism, and opportunities for upward mobility. He argues that

4

Lok Sang Ho, Paul Morris and Yue-ping Chung

effective education may require an institutional set-up beyond the formal education sector, and "must interface with the reality of the society in which the students live." Ian Scott's chapter uses post-handover Hong Kong as its focal point and argues that the changing social and political context has a significant effect on policy making. In particular, there is a risk that the activities of diverse interest groups may so circumscribe policy making that the government either loses the perspective of the interest of society at large, or becomes ineffective and lacks the capability and legitimacy to carry out its decisions. Obviously, this political perspective has relevance beyond the context of Hong Kong, and reminds education reformers of the potential difficulties arising from political considerations. Ho's chapter on what builds world class universities argues that excellent people, if left alone, will do excellent work. If Hong Kong's universities can manage to assemble the best minds to work for them (a challenging task!), and provide them with the necessary infrastructure support, the task of building world class universities is more than half done. So long as we have the right people, our universities will grow into world class universities - if left alone, but many of the recent initiatives launched by the University Grants Committee in Hong Kong actually end up depriving the breathing space that universities need. Charles Wong's chapter on sub-degrees affirms the H o n g Kong government's strategy of enhancing the quality of Hong Kong's labour force with the 60 percent target for post-secondary education for the relevant age cohort. The challenge lies in taking advantage of the existing capabilities within the Hong Kong context. Sustainability of this new initiative depends on the ability of the government to meet this challenge. Apart from these chapters, we have included a chapter, by Jason Tan, on Singapore. In many ways, Hong Kong has close parallels to Singapore. Both are international cities at the forefront of globalization. They are both intent on "excellence" and share the same view that a knowledge-based economy and society is the only path to a viable future. The recent initiative of the Singapore government in reforming the undergraduate admission system for its two public universities is of great interest to all who are concerned about competition and education. From 2003 onwards, universities consider not only the performance of applicants in national examinations, but also their performance in the SAT I reasoning test, project work, and participation in co-curricular activities. In contrast, although Hong Kong is also putting more emphasis on non-academic aspects of students' performance, it has not formalized the criteria. In the section "Experiments, Dilemmas, and Risks in Secondary Schools" are four chapters dealing with various kinds of experiments and reforms. Paul Morris and Ian Scott found that the Hong Kong government had, from the colonial days until now, followed largely a top-down approach to education

Driving for Excellence: An Introduction to the Volume

5

reform. They found the broader political-economic-cultural environment an important constraint to policy implementation, often compromising its effective implementation during the colonial days, and they saw little promise of a breakthrough under the Tung Chee-hwa administration, notwithstanding his espousal of education as a top priority. Thomas Tse's chapter focuses on Hong Kong's pursuit for educational quality and excellence through greater and greater doses of managerialism and marketization, with not altogether happy results. The section "Ideals Versus Reality: The Interplay of Diverse Interests and Diverse Perceptions" starts with a chapter by Kwok-chan Lai, Kwok-wai Ko and Elizabeth Lai-man Cheung. They examine recent attempts in Hong Kong to improve the quality of primary education through the upgrading the level of preparation of primary teachers to degree level, and the provision of a number of higher paid graduate posts in primary schools. The authors look closely at how the graduate teacher policy actually operates at the school level, and reports both positive and perverse effects emanating from its implementation. They point to the importance of aligning the organizational structure of schools with a teacher pay system that will facilitate a change in organizational culture and support systemic school reforms. In line with the general thrust of this volume about the need to consider education as more than just providing j o b skills, Po-king Choi is critical of the "ultra-utilitarianism" displayed by those shaping the language policy in our schools. At the same time, she is aware of the dilemma that faces educators: how to maintain pedagogical soundness while ensuring the access of students to English, which admittedly is important for career building. Edward Vickers, Flora Kan, and Paul Morris's chapter is entitled "Colonialism and the Politics of Chinese History in Hong Kong's Schools". Hong Kong's school history curriculum is unique worldwide in that it consists of two entirely separate subjects — history and Chinese history — which differ not only in content, but also in terms of their pedagogy and their assumptions concerning the nature of history as a discipline. The pattern of curriculum development for history in Hong Kong over the past few decades suggests that the relationship of colonialism to curriculum development may in Hong Kong's case be understood in terms of a mutually convenient collaboration between the government and local educational elites. Chi-kuen Lau's chapter is an excellent overview of the education system in Hong Kong from the point of view of a journalist. He discusses several key controversial issues such as the role of examinations in allocating students to schools, the government initiatives to promote use of the mother tongue as the medium of instruction in schools, the introduction of the direct subsidy scheme (DSS) (much like the charter schools of the United States), and the abolition of the academic aptitude test which had been used as the basis for assigning primary school graduates to secondary schools. Lau's study of the response of the mass media to these issues is a study of mass

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Lok Sang Ho, Paul Morris and Yue-ping Chung

psychology and public perception of delicate policy issues that will make interesting reading for those from other areas of the world. Lok Sang Ho then attempts to draw lessons from all the discussions and to summarize some key "prescriptive" recommendations, reflecting on what may close the gap between ideals and reality. Global trends in education reform often leave us with the impression that there is little escape from marketization, which certainly in itself is a key part of the globalization process. Still, just as pointed out throughout this book, and as William Tabb of the City University of New York says, it will be important to re-appreciate the deeper meanings and the goals of education, such as "enhancing critical citizenship, personal development and the participation in culture that is the right of all students in a democracy." Instead of, or perhaps in spite of, jumping on the bandwagon of "taking the challenge to join the league of the world's best 100" or the like, and of taking on hightech engineering and executive MBAs (without denying their intrinsic values), rediscovering the meaning of the community is at least as important a part of excellence as anything else. All in all, the collection in this volume demonstrates how daunting the task of education reform is to achieve excellence, and argues that promoting excellence, among other things, should mean promoting excellent life skills so as to enhance the quality of life for those going through the process of education. Together, the authors have contributed much insight to serve as guideposts or warning signs against pitfalls, and they have reminded us of the importance of grasping the political reality and mass psychology, both of which may well compromise the effectiveness of even well considered education reforms.

PART

I

CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORKS

2 Education Reform: A Socio-Economic Perspective Lok Sang Ho

Education is productive in a broad sense. It promotes excellence not only by imparting jobrelated skills, but by allowing each individual to feel happy through being at h o m e with themselves, realizing their own potential, finding meaning in living, and gaining in confidence. To achieve such ends, the focus of schools must not lie in setting students to compete with o n e a n o t h e r a n d must n o t effectively treat a n d label students who fall b e h i n d in the competition as outcasts or inferior. We will need more enlightened educational and social institutions that respect individuals as persons, because teachers cannot teach one thing while the system teaches another. To be effective, schools have to be congruent with the society — its values, habits, traditions, and the stage of economic development. This chapter also addresses such issues as examinations and drilling, teachers' autonomy, and curriculum.

Introduction Education should be a productive activity. Hong Kong spends one-fifth to onequarter of its public expenditures on education. 1 This spending would not be justified if it did not bring a reasonable return. However, "productive" and "return" need to be understood in much broader terms than may be ordinarily considered. Education needs to produce something that is both socially and economically valuable; outputs from education must be valued both for their own sake and as an intermediate input in commercial production. Education should produce "value-added", and efficient education should produce valueadded in a cost-effective fashion — with minimum wastage and minimum negative side effects. In this paper, I outline the nature of the value-added in education; describe the process of production and discuss what conditions the efficiency or lack of efficiency of education; describe the different sources of input and discuss the role of government, the role of teachers, parents, and the social and economic environment; and I discuss three aspects of the institutions that affect the efficiency of education production: examinations, autonomy, and opportunities for upward mobility.

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Lok Sang Ho

The nature of value-added in education Traditionally, economists have estimated the returns of education as the wage premiums achieved with better education, such as indicated by the Mincer equation. That model relates the incomes of individuals to their educational achievements and is typically estimated using cross-sectional data. But the Mincer equation cannot tell us the source of the wage premium, and it is recognized that the premium could simply reflect a signalling effect, indicating that the well educated are brighter and smarter than others. While the Mincer approach does provide useful quantitative estimates regarding private returns from education, to assess the social returns from education we have to look further afield. We have to assess if education, indeed, nurtures skills and attitudes that are valuable. There are at least six aspects of value-added that may be derived from the education process: • Self-control skills, implying the ability to focus the mind on a task, the ability to control one's emotions, and the awareness of the need for balance. 2 • Reflective skills. This is important for personal growth and life-long learning. • Social skills. This allows a person to lead a richer life, being able to live with others and to expand career opportunities. • Mastery of skills of communication and reasoning. • Knowledge about the world and the society in which students live. This allows the student to better take advantage of available opportunities, manage risks, and live a fuller life. • Vocational or professional knowledge and skills. Unlike the more generic skills listed above, these skills are job-related. Typically, schools do not offer subjects in the first three aspects, but there can be plenty of opportunities to acquire such life skills in the school: all kinds of school work require a degree of self-control and therefore benefit students as they unwittingly develop such skills. In fact, students probably benefit more through acquiring such skills than by acquiring knowledge or explicitly taught skills. Unfortunately, students as well as teachers may not be aware of the importance of this dimension of learning. Being able to sit quietly to attend a talk, read a book, work on a project, prepare for a test, train for a tournament ... are all part of self-discipline training. Learning to face the results of a test regardless of how good or how bad they are, and learning to avoid mistakes made in the past provide important opportunities for self-reflection. Learning to relate to classmates who may not always be friendly, learning to observe school rules, and learning to deal with one's and others' negative emotions are again all part of the training for better social skills. Unfortunately, because educators may not be aware of the importance of this dimension of learning,

Education Reform: A Socio-Economic Perspective

11

students may not get the guidance they need at the time the guidance is needed. 3 Reading, writing, and speaking are basic communication skills and are, of course, fundamental to learning at a higher level. It is no accident that the 3Rs are regarded as so important everywhere and at all times. Then there is learning about our world and society. We need to bear in mind that subjects that fall within this scope are intended to better orient students to the world, so let us not forget that it is students who are at the centre of the stage, not the subjects under study. Vocational and career-related skills are, of course, also of great value. However, to acquire such skills and to benefit from them, students need to have self-discipline, emotional balance, and good communication skills. In an important sense then, training in such skills at school is secondary to the selfmanagement skills, communication skills, and social skills which are listed first in the above value-added checklist. PROPOSITION ONE: The education experience potentially equips students with concentration skills, analytical skills, self-reflection skills, emotion control, discipline, organization skills, social skills, and communication skills, over and above the knowledge transmitted.

The Education Production Process The education process can be seen as involving two stages. The first is imitation and application. Through imitation the student acquires the building blocks necessary for performing certain tasks. With these building blocks, the student will then be prepared to apply them to new tasks and even to improvise creatively. The second stage is learning through experience what is good (right) and what is bad (wrong) through reflection on the results of good and bad decisions / judgements. These two sets of learning processes are, of course, not mutually exclusive. The task of educators is (i) to provide the most efficient imitation models so that students can acquire good building blocks efficiently;4 (ii) to provide plenty of opportunities for students to use their newly-acquired building blocks creatively; (iii) to provide a more-or-less controlled environment so that students can make mistakes without unduly hurting themselves and can learn from their mistakes. If the educational experience is to be effective and efficient, we need to have teachers who can provide good examples for imitation, give proper guidance so that students can learn from their mistakes, empower students so that they are keen to imitate, are ready to learn from their mistakes, and are motivated to work creatively. Teachers must also be allowed and encouraged to exercise their ingenuity. In this way they will bring out the best of professionalism in carrying out their duties.5

12 Lok Sang Ho Because of the importance of teachers as role models and as counsellors, all teachers must learn the proper ways of handling emotional problems. Whether they like it or not, teachers cannot shun this responsibility, as if counselling was the sole responsibility of school social workers. Social workers or trained counsellors must certainly step in when problems surface, but if teachers can handle emerging problems properly in a timely manner, they can help prevent more serious problems. Teachers also need to know that drilling is not such an awful thing to be shunned or minimized.6 Students need to be drilled adequately in such things as language and mathematics to acquire the necessary building blocks so they can handle problems as they grow up and can learn how to learn. It is unfortunate that while "Learning to Learn" is the title of a report put out by the Curriculum Development Council (CDC) in Hong Kong in 2000, when it comes to "How to Act — Effective Learning, Teaching, and Assessment", the document explicitly asks teachers not to "pose questions to which there is only one answer" and not to "force students to do excessive mechanical drills" (CDC, 2000, Chapter 4). Clearly, mathematical problems and even grammatical rules may dictate that in many cases there is only one answer.7 Clearly anything "excessive" is to be avoided, so what is the point of asking teachers not to drill excessively? The likely and unfortunate result is that the document will give the wrong message that drills are bad and to be avoided by teachers and detested by students. Students will then fail to acquire the necessary building blocks to learn and to think creatively. The trick is not to kill the interest while students are asked to do the many necessary exercises for acquiring skills. Educators need to realize that creativity is a spontaneous response when students have acquired the building blocks of skills to manifest that creativity, and when they are given an environment that allows and encourages the expression of creativity. So, apart from helping students to build up basic skills, part of the process of education must be the fostering and maintenance of such an environment. PROPOSITION TWO: The education process involves both imitation and drilling, and creative explorations and reflections. Maintaining interest through creative activities and self-confidence through an appropriate dose of imitation and drilling will make the process much more effective and less frustrating for students.

Inputs in the Education Process and Motivation What are the inputs in the education process? Certainly physical investments are involved: school premises, teaching aids and facilities, and all kinds of training equipment. But more important are the inputs by way of brain power — teachers' brainpower and students' brainpower. More important still are

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the institutions that shape the use and development of such brainpower. When considered in a broader context, the social and the economic environments have direct impacts on the effectiveness of education.

Quality assurance in the education process Having quality teachers, quality textbooks, well-equipped schools, and quality students are all important. However, teachers and students are human beings while textbooks and the school environment are a commodity and an infrastructure. It is difficult to avoid hard feelings and protest if the government imposes mandatory tests on teachers in an attempt to banish those teachers found not up to the mark. With regard to textbooks it is much easier: consumers' rights of protection require that we should be able to take faulty textbooks out of use. Textbooks should certainly be examined for their quality and should be disallowed if they fail the quality test. From the point of view of education, students are the raison d'etre of education and so all students are "good students" (i.e. good to receive proper education), though they can be badly placed in a setting inappropriate to their preparations. It is important that students be properly placed at a level appropriate to their preparations. If education reform is to be effective, it should at least help bring this about. While imposing benchmark tests for teachers is always unpopular with teachers,8 quality assurance for teachers is as important as ever. In Hong Kong, there was a time when students who failed to gain admission into already vastly expanded universities went to teachers' colleges as a last resort. Many of them eventually became the teachers of today. The quality of this crop of teachers is mixed. Because of the paramount importance of languages, however, requiring language teachers to pass language proficiency tests is clearly in the interest of both students and the general public, even though this is not welcome by the teachers. Today the importance of attracting truly high calibre graduates into the ranks of teachers has been recognized. In North America, colleges of education are for students with a good honours degree and not for undergraduate admission. Another key element in attracting high calibre people into education is to give them greater autonomy in teaching and in shaping the school curriculum. This will not only allow existing teachers to do a better job, but will also enhance the professional status of teachers and, over the longterm, will help attract quality people into the profession. Professional autonomy is widely regarded as important, not only as a symbol of professional status but also to give teachers sufficient freedom to use their ingenuity in exploring more effective ways of teaching. Just as the government should not dictate how firms produce their products, so teachers and schools must not be told by the government how they should teach.

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The Education Department (ED) should set the minimum language and mathematics achievements expected of students at each level while allowing students to proceed at their natural pace. Quality teachers and textbooks should be made available to all schools. Then it should leave schools and teachers alone unless they are found to be irresponsible. If schools or teachers are inadequate they should be helped to improve. If they are found to be truly incompetent, the m a n a g e m e n t should be changed and the teachers discharged, rather than cutting their resources. Cutting resources only unfairly further disadvantages students already plagued by poor teachers. PROPOSITION THREE: It is important to attract quality graduates to go into teaching. Allowing teachers a high degree of autonomy and supporting their endeavours through adequately equipped schools and quality textbooks are at least as important as material incentives to attract quality teachers. Just as we need quality teachers and quality textbooks to do their parts in the education process, so we also need students to put in their share of effort if education is to bring good results. To do this we need a set of institutions that can motivate them and inform them of how well they are doing.

Examinations with no pressure Results from the PIRLS 2001 International Report: IEA's Study of Reading Literacy Achievement in Primary Schools (2003) are most revealing. The Progress in International Literacy Study Report presented reading achievement results for 35 participating countries, and data about pertinent home, school, and classroom contexts for learning to read. Amazingly, while Hong Kong children were found to be number one at grade one in terms of mastery of words and phrases and reading complete sentences, this apparent superiority was lost by grade four, at which Hong Kong ranked 14 among the 35. Even more surprising, the percentage of outstanding achievers at grade four was 6 percent, far lower than the international average of 10 percent, and way behind Singapore's 15 percent. 9 Hong Kong actually ranked last against two indicators: early reading activity at home, and reading for pleasure outside of the school curriculum. What are the reasons behind these paradoxical results? In fact, the results are hardly surprising. Hong Kong is known to be pressurising students at far too early an age. Excessive examinations and homework could work for a short while, thus accounting for the fantastic achievement at grade one, but they are counterproductive over the longer term, because they simply destroy the interest of students in reading and learning. Why are students under such great pressure in Hong Kong? For years, educators in Hong Kong have named examinations and tests as the culprit

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for causing the pressures. To reduce the pressure from examinations, Hong Kong replaced an examination on the Chinese and the English languages and arithmetic with one on academic aptitude, for which no preparation was supposed to be possible. But schools simply drilled students in this academic aptitude test with various manuals available in the market. Starting in 20022003, even the academic aptitude test was abolished, and public schools are not allowed to run admission tests. Instead of pressure being reduced, however, we now find parents anxiously trying to train their children for interviews and to equip them with piano and violin and other skills so they can impress their would-be interviewers. One hypothesis is that the banding system in Hong Kong, rather than examinations, is the real source behind the pressures. For many years, before 2002-2003, Hong Kong primary school leavers were classified into five bands and placed into secondary schools accordingly. Band 4 and Band 5 students were routinely treated as hopeless and schools that are the repository of such students were also poorly regarded. The morale of teachers and students in such schools was generally low. In fact there is some evidence that the schools are at a disadvantage attracting good teachers. Parents, students, the principals and teachers of primary schools, all shun the prospect of their children, themselves, or their students being admitted into a fifth-band school. Since it is inevitable that one-fifth will be placed into the fifth band and another onefifth will be placed into the fourth band, the only way to escape the disgrace of being so banded is to get ahead of others. Under such a system, anxiety becomes inevitable. It inevitably hurts one-fifth or two-fifths of students mentally and socially. It seems clear that, if the results of examinations are not used to band students into superior or inferior categories, examinations will be much less harmful. It seems even plausible to me that, if the results of examinations are used primarily for developmental purposes, examinations can serve as an instrument to help students reflect upon their own learning process. US President George W. Bush is quite positive about the value of examinations and assessments. In a recent radio address he said: "We n e e d a new way of thinking. We must go back to the fundamentals of early reading and regular testing, local control, and accountability for the results, clear incentives for excellence, and clear consequences for failure..." (Office of the Press Secretary, 2001)

In the Executive Summary of the Education Reform Blueprint (http:// www.whitehouse.gov/news/reports/no-child-left-behind.html) it is thus stated: "Annual r e a d i n g a n d m a t h assessments will provide p a r e n t s with the information they need to know how well their child is doing in school, and

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Lok Sang Ho how well the school is educating their child. Further, annual data is a vital diagnostic tool for schools to achieve c o n t i n u o u s improvement. With adequate time for planning and implementation, each state may select and design assessments of their choosing. In addition, a sample of students in e a c h state will be assessed annually with the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) 4th and 8th grade assessment in reading and math."

Thus, examinations are potentially a great tool and can benefit the education process tremendously, so long as they are administered fairly, and examination results are used appropriately. If examinations produce too much pressure, it is only because we misuse their results, and because they are poorly designed and administered. • Examinations provide an opportunity for students to learn how well they have mastered the materials taught in class. They are an excellent reflective tool and enable students to find their weaknesses. • Examinations provide a scale of achievement for students so that they can see how their effort translates into examination grades. This provides more fun much like points in a video game. • Examination results will sometimes disappoint. During such times, they provide a relatively harmless opportunity for dealing with disappointment, a theme which is bound to recur from time to time through life. • Students have to maintain a degree of self-discipline in order to do well in examinations; therefore examinations help nurture this important quality. On the other hand, when examinations are misused they can be most damaging. The replacement of examinations on the 3Rs in the late 1970s with the Academic Aptitude Test — which is a vulgarized form of I Q test — distorted incentives away from attention to basic skills into skills in handling certain kinds of multiple choice questions. Because students were banded into five categories, they formed the idea that success laid in getting ahead of others. Rather than nurturing a positive attitude about self-reflection, students developed anger against authority, a hatred for examinations, and a distorted image of success and failure. Educators in Hong Kong have now recognized that the banding exercise is harmful and bundled the five bands into three starting in 2002-2003. But a more thorough reform should provide only two bands with the top 20 percent, dubbed the outstanding band, being given the opportunity to select their own schools and the remainder, dubbed the average band, being randomly assigned to their nearest schools. The pressure from examinations will then be considerably reduced. Only then can a positive attitude about examinations and competition be developed. If a test on the traditional 3Rs is to replace the aptitude test, students' basic skills will also be much improved.

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To maintain high morale among students, it is important to give them an achievable target and to avoid treating any of them as the bottom of the heap. Dividing students of different abilities within a school will give each student an achievable goal. Students in Class D can strive to lift themselves to Class C, students in Class C can strive to uplift themselves to Class B, and so on. For primary school leavers, not being placed in the top 20 percent will not be the end of the world, while those who are in the top 20 percent enjoy the advantage of being able to move onto their preferred secondary schools. In contrast, if students at the end of their primary school are assigned to schools of five different bands, it will be much more difficult to move from Band 5 to Band 4 or from Band 4 to Band 3. Moreover, because teachers in Band 5 schools face difficult students year in year out, they are more liable to burnout. As a result, it is that much more difficult for them to help students effectively, particularly when they have to spend much of their time maintaining order in classes, rather than teaching. PROPOSITION FOUR: Examinations and drilling can be useful and much less harmful if results from examinations are not used to penalize students psychologically by designating them to the "bottom fifth" or the "bottom third" and thus labelling them as inferior.

The social and economic environment Schools cannot teach one thing while society teaches the opposite. To be effective, schools have to be congruent with the society — its values, habits, traditions, and economic development. No one can teach students to be honest and law-abiding if society and the government are corrupt and have no respect for the law. No teacher can ask students not to steal if they cannot find jobs and there is no communal support for the unemployed. Education reform cannot be successful in building confidence and respect for others, without there being an open and civil society.

Funding, Salaries of Teaching Staff, and Tuition Fees While it is widely recognized that education brings very high social rates of returns (Psacharopoulos, 1994) parents and students cannot be expected to pay fees commensurate with the cost of education. There are important spillover effects, and equity and distributional considerations dictate that governments have to provide the resources to allow every school age child to be adequately educated. Many countries today provide compulsory education to school age children, and Hong Kong provides nine years of free, compulsory education

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to its school age children. Beyond those nine years, the government continues to provide heavy subsidies, and a good question is how much of public funds should be allocated to each level of education. The standard answer of economists is to provide funds until the optimal level. For basic education, satisfying the quantity target may not be so difficult. However, achieving an appropriate quality target is at least as important. In principle, nine years of compulsory education can be provided at higher cost or lower cost, depending on the quality desired. Lazear (2000) found that an excessively large class will have deleterious effects on education quality, but noted that well-behaved children can tolerate larger classes without too many adverse effects. This result, however, need not mean that fewer resources should be allocated to well-behaved children. Resource utilization is multidimensional; well-behaved children may need less teacher-intensity but may benefit from more library-intensity. In principle, the government should study the pay-off from investing in each dimension and continue with the investment until the marginal benefit is equal to the marginal cost. Should universities charge different fees for different programmes and should the government fund programmes differently? Clearly, programmes vary in cost, but in Hong Kong the variations in cost are considerably narrowed because professors in different disciplines are paid according to the same scale, in contrast to the practice in the United States. In general, the higher the pay, the bigger the system rewards the human capital investment, and the higher the quality of the candidate that potentially fills a given position. In general, anyone who invests in graduate studies will compare the expected returns and risks with the opportunity cost of the graduate studies. How much we should pay a professor in a certain field depends on how high a quality we want to achieve. Because of the differences in the degree of competitiveness in different fields, the marginal improvement in quality that comes with a pay increase may be higher for some fields than that for others. It is well known that in finance, the opportunity cost of professors is high, so to keep high quality professors in universities requires higher salaries. The government can, of course, pay lower salaries, but over the long run it will have to put up with lower quality professors. The same logic applies to the setting of tuition fees. If tuition fees are set higher, the rate of return to education becomes lower, so the attractiveness of education falls, leading to less competition for the programme and a decline in the quality of potential admittees. So whether we want to set higher fees for a specific programme depends on what quality of students we want to attract to those programmes. Ultimately then, it is the comparison of the marginal benefits and marginal costs of increasing teachers' salaries and students' tuition fees that should determine the optimal level of salaries and tuition fees. Marginally increasing salary levels (other things being equal) will, up to a point, enhance the quality

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of teachers in the long run, but it will also cost society the resources involved. Marginally increasing tuition fees on public schools or universities (other things being equal) will produce a benefit in the form of relieving government revenue for other public programmes. But it also produces a cost in the form of a burden on students and their families and even lowering the quality of students in the long run, since higher tuition fees will result in a lower private rate of return to education. However, it is also possible that higher tuition fees could allow an improvement in education quality through better resource procurement. Ultimately, society must decide the balance of these benefits and costs in reaching an optimal level of tuition fees. PROPOSITION FIVE: A Comparison between Marginal Benefits and Marginal Costs, broadly defined, should form the basis for government funding of education, the salary levels of teachers, and the tuition fees of students. The current uniformity of pay scales acrossfieldsin Hong Kong most probably is not optimal.

Curriculum, Standards, and the Education Ladder The latest round of education reform in Hong Kong has recommended a school-based curriculum (CDC, 1999). It is right to give schools a greater role in choosing a curriculum appropriate to their unique setting in the community. However, the government should set the basic requirements in the school curriculum, while allowing schools to add on things that they consider appropriate. As discussed above, the overall curriculum should recognize the need to help students acquire both life skills and jobs skills.10 The underlying and paramount consideration is that the student is always at the centre of the stage. He / she needs to acquire the skills and particularly the attitude necessary to live a happy, rewarding life. The school curriculum must include elements that create mental goods that can help build a positive attitude and assist the student to deal with mental bads, so they can deal with disappointment, jealousy, hate, and anxiety. In this regard, the curriculum design objectives adopted by Queen Elizabeth School Old Students' Association Secondary School are exemplary. According to the headmistress, Mrs. Chen Wen-ning Mak, the curriculum is intended to enable students to: • Master communication and calculation skills. • Apply the methods of scientific inquiry to broaden knowledge across a range of disciplines. • Appreciate and understand cultural achievements and to develop skills to express one's artistic potential. • Learn about the politics, economics, and social processes in Hong Kong, the Chinese Mainland, and other countries. • Respect and follow principles of citizenship.

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•

Understand and appreciate people of diverse backgrounds, values, beliefs and to cooperate with them. Understand the ecological implications of alternative decisions. Prepare oneself for further studies or employment. Strengthen skills for managing one's daily living. Have a sense of learning and applying knowledge through life.

• • • •

The government has a key role in setting standards and in streamlining the education ladder. This is to reduce information costs and to enhance accountability. For example, potential employers may have an expectation about the educational achievements of a high school leaver and alternatively that of a university graduate. Streamlining the education ladder is important as an education ladder with too many truncated segments will prove frustrating for teachers and students. The education ladder should be designed to fit the developmental needs of children at different ages. Thus it should be carefully worked out by experts. The aim is to preserve and to cultivate the interest to learn. The education ladder should also try to provide continuity development, and upward mobility. The prospect for upward mobility maintains the morale of students and their parents. It is important that the avenues for upward mobility be opened and a fair and transparent mechanism be in place to ensure fairness and access. In this regard, examinations definitely serve important roles, as they are least open to manipulation and foul play. To administer public examinations at the end of Grades 6 and 12 to measure education output is fine. Having public examinations at the end of Primary 6, Form 5, and Form 7, as in practice in Hong Kong for a long time, is too truncated. A four-year university curriculum to complement a 12-year grade school system provides more continuity and allows m o r e r o o m for developmental education, compared to a 6+5+2+3 system (6 years in primary school, 5 in secondary, 2 in matriculation, and 3 in university). PROPOSITION six: The education ladder should be designed to allow sufficient room for developmental purposes at each stage of development while the curriculum should recognize the emotional and psychological needs of the student.

Government Role in Ensuring a Level Playing Field The government has a key role in ensuring a level playing field, which is necessary to enhance morale for everyone. Morale should not be preserved only for the lucky ones but should be ensured for all children and for all teachers. As argued above, the banding of secondary schools so that some schools effectively source predominantly Band 5 students (or Band 3 under the new system) year in year out while other schools source Band 1 students is not fair

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to both the students and teachers of lower band schools. The proposal made above, namely to randomly assign students other than the top 20 percent to schools in their neighbourhood allows all schools to compete fairly. Every school, other than those that are preferred, would source essentially the same mix of students. Even the preferred schools of today cannot be sure of being preferred tomorrow as other schools, through their innovation and effort, may become attractive to students and parents and be selected by top students in the future. The Hong Kong government's policy, implemented shortly after the handover of sovereignty to China, of disallowing most schools to use English as a medium of instruction while allowing 120 schools to use English is another example of violating the level playing field principle. Schools should be given autonomy to decide what is in the best interest of students. The government's role is to ensure that the teachers who use English as the medium of instruction are qualified. Paradoxically, offering English medium instruction only to students who can demonstrate a good command of English at the primary school level will motivate students to slight Chinese. Students then may not learn Chinese properly even though instruction is in the mother tongue. Education is meant to nurture responsible, law-abiding citizens. But this objective is difficult to achieve if people cannot make a living and pursue their aspirations through lawful activities, and if the education system itself is not seen to be fair and open, and respect the differences inherent in the diversity of students' backgrounds. The government clearly has the responsibility to provide an adequate social safety net to provide an alternative to criminal activities as a way to procure survival. Only when such a safety net is in place, and only when the economy is creating opportunities for upward mobility can we teach students to be law-abiding citizens and to strive for their dreams through hard work. Hong Kong has an Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC), and has laws and a penal system to keep criminals at bay, but only when all able-bodied people can make a living, and when the handicapped, the weak, and the sick are well cared for, can schools teach the virtues of honesty, compassion, and care for others. PROPOSITION SEVEN: The government has an important role in maintaining a level playing field and in opening channels for upward mobility for law-abiding citizens. This is necessary before civic education can be effective.

Conclusions Education is an investment that potentially brings high returns. However, it is not strictly a private matter, and equity as well as efficiency considerations dictate that the government must be involved.

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Both the inputs in the education process and the outputs from education are heterogeneous, which makes the education market a world apart from the ideal perfect competition model. The government needs to get involved in setting and assuring standards and, because there are important external benefits from education and significant implications for equity, the government has to shoulder much of the cost of the education investment. The government has much responsibility in ensuring a level playing field in education, but should respect the autonomy of front-line teachers and schools. Education is not just the transmission of knowledge. I n d e e d the transmission of knowledge is only of secondary importance. More basic to the goals of education are the nurturing of reflective and independence skills (Ho, 1998). Examinations are potentially, under the right guidance, a valuable tool that can serve this end and deserve an important place in education. Yet examinations are only a tool and not the ends of education. Not only do we need to provide counselling and guidance for our students who have to sit through various examinations throughout life, but the results of examinations must not be used incorrectly. Using examination results to differentiate students beyond distinguishing the top from the average, and thus assign the underachievers to schools effectively banded for the purpose, goes against the principle of a level playing field for secondary schools, hurts the morale of lower band schools and students, and inevitably produces pressure on students. In this instance the culprit is not the examinations, but the misuse of examination results. Education must interface with the reality of the society in which the students live. We cannot shelter our students from the forces imposed by society. Instead students must learn to cope with those forces. For this reason, teachers must be trained not only to effectively transmit knowledge but also to helping students to grow up and face these challenges. The government, being in the position of seeing the major forces at work shaping the development of society, should alert schools of such developments. Schools and teachers should anticipate changes and be prepared to help students cope with all the impending demands.

3 Education Policymaking in a Disarticulated System Ian Scott

This chapter focuses on the role of the state in education reform, addressing the question of how reform may be approached comprehensively when political pressures a n d the orientation of the state itself are usually biased towards more conservative, incremental c h a n g e s . To illustrate this major t h e m e , examples are drawn from t h e H o n g Kong experience, contrasting colonial policy-making and practice with the government's post-1997 reform efforts. T h e e m e r g e n c e of a disarticulated political system, b o t h within t h e governmental system itself and in government's relation with the numerous interested parties in the education field, is identified as a key constraint on education reform and on policy implementation. The chapter concludes with an examination of some possible solutions to the impasse in reform and reflects on their suitability in the present political context.

The difficulties that education policymakers have experienced in posthandover Hong Kong raise important conceptual questions about the way in which we understand, and consequently seek to address, issues of policymaking and reform. Are the issues the same issues that have bedeviled policymakers for more than a century? Or do we need to re-draw the conceptual map, not perhaps because the issues have changed, but because the political context in which the issues are debated, in which solutions are sought and in which policies are implemented, has changed so significantly that our assumptions about the best way forward may be based on outmoded ideas about how the political system actually works? In this chapter, I shall take the position that the critical issues remain — that we can find historical precedents for many of the pressing questions facing today's policymakers — but that the nature of the political system has undergone such fundamental changes in respect to policy implementation, in particular, that we do indeed need to explore new ways of making policy and of undertaking reform. Although this chapter deals mainly with Hong Kong, it focuses conceptually on an issue which is common to all states: how to introduce potentially, and possibly, radical reforms

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in education when, paradoxically, state system-maintenance goals and the political support of many of the major stakeholders in education may be better realized by adopting short-term incremental policies.

The State and the Political and Economic Functions of Education A starting point is to ask the naive, but instructive, question of what it is that the state is seeking to achieve through education policy. There are, of course, multitudinous answers to that question, ranging from the relationship of the education system to the ideological and regime-maintenance ends of the state to the implementation of very specific curricula in schools. At the macro level, the empirical concerns of the state usually seem to be focused on the political and economic functions of education policy: how the education system can best serve the aim of preserving stability (or, to put it another way, how can the system produce citizens who are supportive of existing values) and how, secondly, it can best meet the needs of the economy. These aims, it appears, are not solely the preserve of capitalist states seeking to resolve contradictions within their own systems. They can be found in socialist systems and in many underdeveloped countries, where even if these objectives cannot be realized, they are often the implicit or explicit goals set by those in power. To consider the centrality of these values, one need only try to envisage their opposite. A state that deliberately sought to educate its children in such a manner that they were opposed to the regime or produced graduates that had little utility for the economy would soon find itself in a condition of considerable economic and political turbulence. That is not to concede that, normatively, the state is correct in shaping its educational objectives in this way. Many citizens would no doubt wish to see their children develop a critical selfawareness of the political, social and economic issues that affect their lives and which may lead them to question whether the state, and, more particularly, its government is always moving in the right direction. Educational reformers may be optimizers seeking radical change in the interests of a better society. Many others may be sceptical about the ability of the state to predict manpower needs or to resist the blandishments of professional organizations that claim that particular qualifications are necessary for future prosperity. The fact remains, however, that faced with very real political pressures, states, and their governments, do not normally engage in the pursuit of educational objectives that could potentially prove to be disruptive or economically costly. On rare occasions, policy-makers may be able to make a sufficiently compelling case to bring about substantial changes to the system. But this will depend on both a favourable set of circumstances and the type of political system that enables such reforms to be implemented. Because this combination of events is

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unusual and because other goals often have precedence, education policy generally tends to be conservative. At this macro level, the pre- and post-handover educational objectives of the state in Hong Kong seem very similar. Consider, for example, some key decisions in colonial Hong Kong. In 1862, the government decided as a matter of policy that it should provide English instruction to Chinese students. But nothing much happened. By the late 1870s, the Governor, Sir John Pope Hennessy, had become so exasperated by the lack of progress that he personally inspected two classrooms "containing 150 boys under three Chinese teachers ... I found that neither the teachers n o r the boys could speak a word of English." (Hong Kong Administration Reports 1881:617)

A subsequent survey of 412 students found that only 18 could speak English fluently and 336 could not speak it at all. But this begs the question. Why was the governor of Hong Kong prowling classrooms to find out who could or, more importantly perhaps, who could not speak English? The answer lies in the two basic goals of state educational objectives: socialization and the provision of appropriately-trained labour for the economy. Hennessy believed in the virtues of an English education for both political and economic reasons. He thought that an education in English coupled with exposure to imperial history would produce not only compliant citizens but positive support for the regime. His views on this (but not on many other issues) were strongly endorsed by the business community who saw the need for more bi-lingual employees. A contrasting view was that of Frederick Stewart, Inspector of Schools and headmaster of the Government Central School, who believed in the virtues of a classical Chinese education. There were good political reasons for supporting the teaching of Confucian values, particularly with its emphasis on respect for authority. Colonial authorities remained ambivalent on whether education should be English-based, Confucian-based or some measure of both. Perhaps inevitably, a shifting series of compromises that did not really satisfy any of the major parties to the debate characterized most of colonial rule. These themes can be re-visited in various succeeding periods. In 1902, for example, Hong Kong's first Director of Education, E. A. Irving, asked "Was the English education to be subsidiary or to supersede an education in the mother tongue, or should both be conducted at one time?" (Irving, 1902, p.68). Irving rehearsed the economic arguments for providing an English education but eventually argued that it should be limited to the provision of clerks and that shop assistants and domestic servants could easily pick up a smattering of English without formal education. But he remained essentially ambivalent: [A]n imperial policy may demand more of education than this. It may regard the Chinese boys and girls who leave the Hong Kong schools every year as

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Ian Scott so many pro-English missionaries ... I believe that no child could have spent two years in a Government or Missionary school without having acquired a glimmering of respect for Englishmen and their methods. (Irving, 1902, pp.80-81)

However attractive he may have found the imperial integrative view, in the end Irving realized that it was not practically possible. Education was "simply a question of what the Colony can and cannot afford to pay for" and the idea of "inoculating China with England" (Irving, 1902, p.81) was never going to be feasible for the entire population. The system eventually bedded down in a manner that complemented Hong Kong's colonial political system. The Anglo-Chinese schools could be used to educate future Chinese elites in the English language and to socialize them into British values. Graduates would accede to positions in commerce and the professions and would be selected as members of the government advisory bodies. They were expected to maintain social discipline among the r e m a i n d e r of the Chinese population. The government, through the Education Ordinance of 1913, maintained control over schools with powers to close them down (Sweeting, 1992, p.45) and with the intention, as Irving noted, to prevent the introduction of "unlawful propaganda" (Irving, 1915, p.5) into schools. \fet, although education policy generally served the objectives of colonial rule and the survival of the regime, the policy was never sufficiently well thought through or implemented vigorously enough to be exactly in tune with those requirements. In 1925, for example, the issue of socialization became a central concern when students, including those at the principal government secondary school, Queen's College, left schools in droves in support of a strike-boycott. The Acting Governor, Sir Claud Severn, believed that the reason for this manifest absence of support for the regime among students was that: T h e teaching of Confucian ethics is more and more neglected, while too much attention is being paid to the materialistic side of life ... the ethics of Confucianism ... is ... probably the best antidote to the pernicious doctrines of Bolshevism, and is certainly the most powerful conservative force, and the greatest influence for good. (Colonial Office, 1927, pp.30-31)

Although the official pendulum had swung away from the provision of extensive English education in the school system, no changes were immediately introduced to enhance the teaching of the Chinese classics. Rather, in characteristic fashion, Severn assured the Secretary of State for the Colonies of even more vigilance in combating the spread of anti-colonial doctrines in the schools. The theme of socialization and the need for political control and the importance of meeting the demands of the private sector remained high

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on the agenda but their realization in practical terms was haphazard and lacked an effective implementation process. One final example from colonial history may serve to belabour the point about the close relationship between political objectives and the school system. In the 1950s, when the education system was facing new challenges from the leftist schools and an enormous increase in the school-age population, the Hong Kong government invited N. G. Fisher, Manchester's Chief Education Officer, to produce a report on expenditure on education. In words that might have been written by Irving 30 years earlier, Fisher observed that education in Hong Kong had been entirely secular which he felt was a "serious deficiency in a colonial community where civic and patriotic loyalties can less easily be substituted than they can in a national community" (Fisher, 1951, p.12). On the future, he drew attention to the communist threat, noting that "they wished to establish schools as a means to political indoctrination rather than education" (Fisher, 1951, p. 13). Fisher's report was a precursor to the government's decision to move towards compulsory primary education and to do so by building government schools rather than relying on private providers. It is highly unlikely that the government would have taken this action, however, had they not been faced with alternative challenges from the leftist schools to the values that they were seeking to inculcate in their future citizens. As Sweeting has remarked, there were times in education policy when "politics appeared to have exercised a priority over all other factors, including financial ones" (Sweeting, 1993, p.220). In post-handover Hong Kong, the same objectives of socialization and supplying the economy with its manpower needs are less bluntly stated than they were during colonial times. The emergence of a more plural society, the expression of political interests in many different arenas and the real possibility that important constituents may become disaffected in what is a highly sensitive area means that policymakers have to weigh their words more carefully. Nonetheless, I would argue that, although subsidiary policy issues — by which I mean the whole gamut of concerns about how education is or should be delivered — have tended to flood the agenda, there has still been a reaffirmation of the role of the state. In 1993, an Education Commission (EC) document provided a statement of the aims of education that, if carried through, would have represented a very liberal interpretation of the role of the state in education policy and a much more distant relationship between the state and the providers of education. Its basic premise, for example, was that there is no one correct teaching method, therefore a variety of methods and a p p r o a c h e s should be used in e d u c a t i o n . Although the EC's recommendations had government support, they may not necessarily have enjoyed the same support within government or among the providers of education. With only four years to the handover and a population that was increasingly concerned about the deficiencies of the education system, a liberal

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hands-off approach made good political sense. Unfortunately, however, in the implementation of these ideals, particular projects were often unrelated to the broader picture (Mak, 1996, p. 406). I shall return to that theme later in this chapter. In this context, however, it is an important reminder that displacement activities may very often serve to conceal state aims or that they are so poorly formulated or implemented that reversion to the old ways of doing things is seen to be the simplest solution. Reform is difficult partly because the state has a conservative agenda based on socialization and economic need. Values are consequently entrenched and new initiatives may easily be interpreted through old perceptual lens. The government traditionally has excelled at "bricks and mortar" infrastructural implementation but has been rather less at home with the subtleties of policy formulation, especially social policy. Whatever the problems faced in education policymaking in the immediate period before the handover, the new government was clearly keen to put its stamp on education. Shortly after the retrocession, the government announced that Chinese would become the medium of instruction in junior secondary schools unless a special exemption had been granted (Chan, 2000). A little later, in his policy speech of October 1997, the Chief Executive requested the EC to carry out a comprehensive review of the education system (Tung, 1997). One of the basic premises of this review was that "for every individual there is a gradual process of getting to know Chinese history and culture, so as to achieve a sense of belonging" (Tung, 1997, p.37). This had been emphasized even prior to the handover in the Hong Kong government's 1996 guidelines on civic education which had been even more presumptive on the point, claiming that citizens needed a new "national identity" (see Bray, 1997, p. 10; Morris and Chan, 1997, pp.107-110; on civic education post-1997 see Morris et al, 2000). The consultation document eventually produced by the EC in January 1999, although it was formally wide-ranging in its search for new ways forward, took the twin themes of socialization and economic development to be self-evident. On the economy, it noted that the talents required by the community were now different from those required in the past and that the education system should reflect the need (Education Commission, 1999, p.9). It observed that Hong Kong had to shift to high value-added and technology based products and services and that China provided a huge market for Hong Kong goods. On the ideal future citizen, it said that, in the light of the One Country, Two Systems concept, ... our young people need to understand more about the culture, as well as the present and future developments of our motherland. They also need to appreciate the unique geographical and political characteristics of H o n g Kong to the full, and build on the best of East and West, so as to develop a society which is outward-looking, culturally confident, united, free and democratic. (Education Commission, 1999, p. 10)

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The Commission's report on the consultation exercise, produced in September 2000, recognized that, politically, "reunification with C h i n a a n d democratization [has] changed the ways Hong Kong people think and live" (Education Commission, 2000, p.3) but it did not explain how these factors had changed outlooks or indeed how they might be translated into a reformed education system. The aims of education, for which the report invoked the support of "the community at large," were those of all-round development, lifelong learning and of participation in the improvement of the society, "the nation and the world at large" (Education Commission, 2000, p.4). The report reiterated that the system should "enhance our understanding of our country, our culture and strengthen our sense of belonging and commitment to our country" (Education Commission, 2000, p.28). The state, in short, whether colonial or post-handover, has a view — sometimes strongly articulated, sometimes more vaguely expressed — on how the education system may most appropriately serve the political function of promoting stability and the economic function of increasing prosperity.

The State and the Formulation and Implementation of Education Policy To translate those aims into specific policies, however, is quite another matter. It is here in the interaction between the political system and the formulation and implementation of policy that the differences between the colonial state and the post-handover regime are most evident. The colonial state, as we have seen, was very often unsure of the way forward to achieve its political and economic objectives, uncertain about whether it could or should be involved in the expense and difficulties of pursuing social policies. As government revenues improved and it became more confident of its ability to implement policy, from the 1950s onwards, however, the colonial government was able to display a unity of purpose in the step from policy formulation to implementation that has been lacking since Hong Kong's retrocession to China. How was the colonial government able to achieve this? First, the number of decision-makers was limited and consultation was minimal. Second, coercion or persuasion could be used to bring recalcitrants into line. Third, the implementation of the policy was often conceived of as a crusade; to oppose became an act of disloyalty. A few examples of how this worked in practice will suffice. In 1954, the government formulated a seven-year plan to expand primary education. The plan was essentially the product of the close relationship between the Governor, Grantham, and the Director of Education, Crozier. Crozier drew up the plan with very little apparent input from anyone outside the Education Department, including the Colonial Secretariat. He sold it as a crusade against communism, arguing that

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Ian Scott to meet the situation that is overtaking us a new and ambitious plan is called for. This must embrace every agency that can be employed, both government a n d private. T h e public at large, church bodies, charitable associations, business firms and social groups must all be called upon to play their part. (Executive Council, 1954)

MacLehose used somewhat similar techniques in the 1970s. Although formally the process was more consultative, with a new and more representative Board of Education, when the Board drew up a Green Paper on education, MacLehose used his power and influence as governor to send it back to the Legislative Council. This led to substantive changes to the original proposals and seems to have triggered the resignation of the then Director of Education who was replaced by an administrative officer, presumably of MacLehose's choosing. Implementing policy under the colonial government did, of course, become more difficult for the government as teachers became more unionized, as pressure groups emerged, and as the government became relatively less autonomous in its dealings with society. There were nonetheless still many instances where the government could ensure that its policies were implemented in the manner in which it intended and where proposals not to its liking could be rejected. In pluralist political systems the ability to implement education policy in autocratic ways is usually rare and limited. There is a (probably apocryphal) story of an education minister in the French Fourth Republic who was able to look at his watch and know what every child in the land was studying at that moment. But such centralized control over education becomes more difficult as pressure groups proliferate, content and delivery are increasingly differentiated, citizens have visions of educational provision that differ from those of the state, and political parties seek to develop their own distinctive policy positions. In addition, teachers enjoy a certain amount of autonomy from state control (Dale, 1989). Often, they are not part of the public bureaucracy and, even when they are, professional ethics may not always be consonant with the dictates of a centralized administration. The natural context in which education is usually delivered is decentralized; to impose a centralized system upon it and to ensure compliance necessarily involves very considerable administrative costs and likely political friction. Conversely, however, to decentralize without regard to state objectives creates its own contradictions and usually leads to attempts to reassert state authority (Ball, 1990, pp.19-21; Weiler, 1990, p.42). In the face of these tensions, the state can pursue any one of several options to try to implement its policies. The most apparent and frequently used is the power of the purse. However, this has limitations if the state is weakened to the point where financial incentives are used to appease the power of interest groups or to seek the support of other groups. Financial and

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budgetary control is most useful, politically, when the state can retain a degree of autonomy from competing interests. Hong Kong in this respect may be in a rather different position from some other countries because education ranks so highly as a desired public good. The temptation to use it to secure political support, to shift resources from one part of the education sector to another when need dictates, has been, and remains, very great. But it also means that the attention of pressure groups to the education budget is intense and that much is dependent on an ever-expanding budget for education in real terms. A second strategy that may be used in combination with the overtly political use of resources is the adoption of what is often termed new public management (Marshall and Peters, 1999, pp.xxvi-xxvii; Pierre and Peters, 2000, pp.64-65). The basic premise of new public management is the assumption that private sector practices can be used in the public sector with consequential advantages of greater efficiencies and lower costs. In the field of social policy, this translates into contractual relationships between the purchasers and the providers where, typically, services are no longer the direct responsibility of government. Whether this in fact does achieve all the benefits that its proponents claim is highly questionable. What is undeniably true, however, is that new public management confers enormous political advantages upon the government in power because it removes the central authorities from immediate and direct accountability. Grievances are channelled towards the local providers with the government left in the comfortable position of being able to shift blame (and resources in the case of unpopular non-performers). For this reason alone, new public management has usually obtained bi-partisan support in most Anglo-Saxon countries and has been adopted as a means of relieving pressure on what were perceived, in the 1980s when new public management was first introduced, to be overloaded welfare states. It is characteristic of this method of public sector reform that it is promoted enthusiastically by the state in the name of "empowering stakeholders," "participation," and "accountability" and received only reluctantly by those who are supposed to be its beneficiaries. The metaphor commonly employed is that there are those (the government and senior managers) who provide strategy and direction and who are amply rewarded for these talents — "the steerers" — and those who do the actual work — "the rowers" (Osborne and Gaebler, 1993, pp.34-37). A more apt analogy might be that of a slave galley that frequently ends up on the rocks. In Hong Kong, the language and to some extent the practice of new public management has been adopted in piecemeal fashion. In education, the most important example is that of the school management initiative (Godwin, 1995, pp.106-107; Leung, 2001) which sought to devolve responsibility to schools through a formalized management structure and decentralized financial control. The reforms were seen to be an important case study for wider reform within the Hong Kong government but the initiative did not allow a great deal

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of autonomy for school managers and resulted in increased workloads, a common feature of new public management reforms. There was, consequently, opposition from both teachers and, after 1997, from Christian groups concerned that the management structure might in fact result in greater control rather than more freedom over what was taught in the schools (Leung and Chan, 2001; Leung, 2001). l This reform is still very much government policy but it seems likely to continue to meet with opposition along the lines that have already occurred and that have been experienced elsewhere. It is difficult for the state in Hong Kong to pursue new public management strategies as a solution to the inevitable friction that education policy causes in a centralized system. New public management reforms have typically been introduced in states that have a fairly strong unified centre — that is, that the state can retreat from the direct exercise of a function such as education but that its core control mechanisms remain unaffected. Ideally, strategy and policy are devised at the centre while devolved authorities go about the business of implementing central directives within a broad remit. There is some evidence that this aspect of new public management is achieving the result of insulating the centre from criticism in Anglo-Saxon countries although at the expense of other values such as accountability and the broader participation of affected groups in policy-making. In Hong Kong, however, the insulation of the centre from fractious groups intent on influencing policy is unlikely to be achieved. There are three reasons for this. The first is that the centre has never been entirely happy about divesting itself of power over implementation. It is difficult for a government with highly centralized traditions to devolve responsibility, in the fullest sense, particularly if it has in mind a strong socializing role or an interventionist stance in the labour market. The post-handover government has shown as little enthusiasm for meaningful decentralization as its colonial predecessors. In the decade and a half before the handover, the colonial government through the creation of bodies such as the EC was able "to demonstrate an enhanced level of public participation [and provide] a vehicle for the deflection of aggression and avenue for intra-governmental squabbles" (Morris, 1996, pp.334-335) while retaining central control. The tendency for the post-handover Hong Kong government has also been to attempt to increase rather than to decrease central control, albeit with rather less success, even while apparently conceding more local decision-making and participation. To take one example, the school management initiative can be seen as much as an exercise in re-regulation as it can as an exercise in decentralization (Leung, 2001). The second reason is that, even if decentralization is achieved, it is still relatively difficult for the centre to shift the public's burden of expectation from the government to local providers. This is partly because Hong Kong is small and government is more immediately felt and directly targeted than in many of the Anglo-Saxon countries where new public management strategies

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have been adopted. In addition, because education is such a highly desired public good, government is expected to take at least some responsibility for it. Finally, there are at present inadequate alternative local or national educational structures that might take on decision-making roles and deflect attention from government. That such structures could be created, however, should not be entirely ruled out. The Hong Kong housing and hospital authorities have served not only to retain government control over substantive policy areas but also partially to focus grievances about provision of services on the authorities rather than on the government. The third, and most important, reason why the government cannot look to new public management solutions for the problems it faces in education policy-making and implementation, is because the political system itself has, since the handover, become disarticulated (Scott, 2000). In the sense in which the word is used here, this refers to a situation in which the central institutions composing the state pull apart from one another rather than presenting a unified position in state relationships with society. This situation has arisen because of the complex interaction of a range of political and social factors during the transition to Chinese sovereignty and in its immediate aftermath. These factors include the role of the new sovereign power in the post-handover order, the alignment of much of the business establishment with that new order, the shifting constitutional policies of the British government in the prehandover period, the rise of civil society and the continuing decline of the government's legitimacy, a condition exacerbated by the Asian financial crisis and the problems of dealing with the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) epidemic. The results of these conflicting forces has been a constitutional system that is divided within itself: where the executive and the legislature are at loggerheads, where the bureaucracy is not seemingly accountable to either the legislature or to the executive, where the executive does not enjoy popular s u p p o r t because it is n e i t h e r popularly elected nor selected by the representatives of the people, where the independence of the judiciary has been called into question, and where the institutional channels for the popular expression of views are defective. Without in any way defending the normative basis of colonialism, it must be recognized that the constitutional system through which the colonial government sought to exert authority was far less fragmented. Policy could, for the most part, be centrally formulated and implemented without the prospect of wide-scale objections to any or every proposal. In a disarticulated system, this is not possible because every major decision is a value decision for affected groups or institutions within the system; there is a perception that to concede or compromise on an important issue is to lose a wider battle. Policy becomes a zero sum game and a victim of a political war of attrition. The state loses some of its capacity to formulate and implement policy and, while it may still express its education policies in terms

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of the achievement of high-flying ideals, all the major actors know that implementation is another and much more complex matter.2 Implicit in this view of the post-handover order is the notion that institutions or groups form separate policy nodes to which very different proposals on the same subject might be addressed and pursued. Thus, in education policy-making, the executive might derive views from its own perspective on Hong Kong's education needs. The EC might make policy recommendations either independently or at the behest of government. The legislature might be the recipient of complaints and demands and might take a different stance on education policy. Pressure groups might relay their view to the legislature or seek to articulate them through political parties and the press. Professionals could seek to get their views heard through reference to best practice elsewhere and to the shortcomings of the local system. The major result of this kind of activity is that it makes it much more difficult to implement policy (Morris and Scott, 2003). Policy-making is not only uncoordinated but it loses the critical link between formulation and implementation. Institutions and powerful groups within the system enjoy sufficient power to exercise vetoes over policy and to frustrate the intentions of the policymakers. This diffusion of power within a system is sometimes described as polyarchic3 and it can lead to incremental policy-making where the system lacks focus and all that is possible are inadequate compromises over relatively minor issues. To its credit, the EC has recognized that since the various parts of the education system are inter-related, it is necessary to reform the system in a comprehensive rather than in a piecemeal fashion (Education Commission, 2000). However, it has also hedged its bets by saying that, in the light of concerns expressed by teachers, students, parents and other parties "we have to move with great prudence, sometimes with incremental steps" (Education Commission, 2000, p.ii). In those few words lies the germ of a critical problem: How does the state steer between the Scylla of comprehensive reforms, where it lacks the authority to make good its promises, and the Charybdis of incremental reforms, some of which may have wide support but which do not add up to coherent view of the future?

Implications for Policy Implementation and Reform If central policymakers are faced with a polyarchic and disarticulated political system, a suspicious and vocal constellation of pressure groups, and an environment in which even unimportant changes can become highly contested, what strategies could be pursued to realize far-reaching, broader reform in Hong Kong's education system? The short answer would appear to be that the state needs to build capacity in a rather different fashion than that pursued during colonial times. It may need to seek allies among significant

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groups in the political firmament rather than trying to impose centrally formulated policies that lack support at the implementation stage. Most important, there are particular prescriptions that would seem to make the situation worse, or at least would not substantially alleviate the discontent with the present system. First, tempting as it may be to devolve functions to the school system under the guise of greater local autonomy, new public management practices seem unlikely to work in the present political context. Even in those countries with well-established local authorities, a common complaint has been that in the face of devolution and the direct delivery of public services, government is less able to govern (Huddleston, 2000). The paradox is that, if the grant of autonomy is genuine, the centre's policy directives cannot be guaranteed. To ensure that they are carried out, a new army of managers has to be employed to ensure compliance, a development that, of course, serves to negate the original intention of granting autonomy. Aside from this consideration, the introduction of new public management in any systematic way has enormous human costs (Rees and Rodley, 1995). These may include, for example, the effects of downsizing, the introduction of performance indicators, and various (often futile) attempts to measure outputs and workloads. There may be no good time to introduce new public management but, when the political support for the government is already low, it would seem peculiarly perverse to alienate (or further alienate) another constituency. Second, despite an initial frankness about its intentions in education, the post-handover government has seemingly backed away from confrontation with groups opposed to its policies in favour of attempts to reach consensus. The EC Report of September 2000 drew attention to the concerns expressed in the 30,000 written submissions that it had received and promised a slow pace of implementation to meet those objections (Education Commission, 2000). The new Chair of the Education Commission has made it clear that she will consult all interested parties in the search for the way forward (Cheung, 2001). The position of the Secretary of Education and Manpower, who was appointed in July 2002, has essentially been similar. He has argued that: the policies that have been pursued ... are correct but the problem often lies with implementation ... we must be inclusive not exclusive ... but still ultimately we must do what is right for the whole community. (Secretary for Education and Manpower, 2003)

While this has the advantage of keeping potentially disaffected groups within the same institutional arena, it does not resolve policy issues when contentious matters, such as the medium of instruction, are seen as zero-sum game situations. Under these circumstances, there is a great temptation on the part of any government to attempt to govern by rhetoric, claiming adherence to a spurious consensus or to motherhood values when no such

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consensus or agreement in fact exists. Policy implementation becomes even more difficult because instructions are couched in such general value terms that they may or may not be adopted at the school level. At the macro-level, the policy intentions of the government then appear confused or without substance. Finally, we need to return to the wider, critical constitutional problem. It seems unlikely that effective reform can be undertaken in the present education system if groups can successfully oppose central policy and if the policy-makers choose to keep their intentions under wraps or to modify them continually in the face of opposition. But this is not simply a characteristic of the education policy-making system. It is a feature of the post-handover political order in Hong Kong. Unless progress is made towards a more unified system, where the various state institutions work in harmony rather than in opposition to one another, the immediate prospect of resolving the policy malaise seems remote. The danger is that social policymaking will decline into incremental drift, as it has done in some other countries, notably in some parts of the education system in the United States. New policies may be proposed, reforms may be undertaken but the chance of successful implementation is hostage to the creation of a political system where the state can act authoritatively and legitimately in the interest of all its citizens. The state, in short, needs to re-build its own capabilities in policy-making before reform is likely to succeed.

PART

II

REFORM OF TERTIARY EDUCATION

The Way to Build World-Class Universities Lok Sang Ho

This c h a p t e r argues that universities n e e d b r e a t h i n g space to grow into world-class universities. The soul of universities lies in their scholars. Universities need to assemble the best minds and allow them the greatest degree of autonomy so they can produce fruitful research and nurture new generations of inquisitive, community-minded graduates. Once the bright minds are assembled, minimal intervention and maximum infrastructure support provide the fertile soil for world-class universities.

Introduction We may as well begin with a submission that I made to the University Grants Committee in 2002 during the consultation exercise following the Sutherland Report. I wrote: If there is one thing H o n g Kong can be proud of (and there certainly are lots of other things that H o n g Kong can be proud of), it is its universities. Hong Kong's oldest university in Hong Kong — the University of Hong Kong —just celebrated its 90th birthday last year. All the others, with the exception of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, came into being in the 1990s. By most measurable criteria, all of these universities have now achieved a very high standard both in terms of teaching and research, and they excel in different areas ... It must be admitted, however, that the complaints about the quality of many of our university graduates we hear from employers and others are often valid. But to be fair to all those minds which have worked hard to establish a good name for our universities, this has little to do with the alleged "mediocrity" of our universities. Hong Kong has expanded its enrollment of students tremendously over a short period of time, and, with increasing affluence, many high caliber students from our secondary schools have gone overseas. Under such circumstances, a decline in the average quality of our university graduates is to be expected. What must be celebrated is that our universities continue to produce top graduates who are taking u p leading

Lok Sang Ho roles in the government, in the business sector, and in academia. Indeed, many of our graduates have become internationally renowned scholars, and are teaching in leading universities in the US, Hong Kong, and elsewhere. They have published widely in highly reputable international journals, authored scholarly books, and many have developed commercially viable inventions a n d life-saving surgical procedures. To call o u r universities "second-rate" without carefully and objectively studying the quality of our teaching programmes, our research output, and that of the services our university professors and lecturers have been rendering society, in various kinds of community service, mostly for free is irresponsible, misleading, and damaging. [Despite criticism from various corners] ... University students from H o n g Kong have taken part in international competitions and have achieved top performance. These are all facts and no fiction. [To counter entrenched impressions that are not based on facts we need] a fair review of each programme by the University Grants Committee that will provide an objective, authoritative assessment for students' information. It must tell the public a n d particularly potential students wherever a n d whenever they spot true areas of excellence. Such a mechanism is much n e e d e d , just as consumer products need to be assessed objectively and c o n s u m e r s n e e d to be informed. Without a C o n s u m e r s ' Council that routinely makes authoritative reports on consumer products, new brands will have difficulty fighting the established brands, and fair competition will be harder to establish ... O n e counter-productive activity that purports to improve quality is to "top-slice" university funding and then with the funds derived to award huge amounts to only a handful of programmes that are deemed to be "areas of excellence (AOEs)." This procedure is dissipative of valuable resources, demoralizing, and hurts rather than helps promote quality. We do not need such musical chair games. All excellent programmes need to be recognized and aired out for everybody to see, so students will know what they will get when they enroll in a programme. Musical chair competitions will only divert the energy of our university professors from down-to-earth research and teaching to unproductive flimsy meetings a n d write-ups aimed only at dressing u p their programmes as areas of excellence. In the end the title of "excellence" is awarded to only a lucky few. Because of the economic law of diminishing returns, however, we know that much of the huge sums of money awarded to these AOEs are likely to be wasted. The public and particularly policy makers must dispel long-held myths. Money is not always necessary to provide incentives. The drive for excellence is intrinsic in academics who are true scholars. For this reason I do n o t believe that the Nobel Prize ever promoted excellence. Isaac Newton and Bertrand Russell never needed a Nobel Prize or an AOE to goad them to do research (even though Russell did get one). To build world-class universities, all that is needed are: adequate funding, a mechanism to hire the right people to run the universities — people who have the innate desire to strive for excellence, and the willingness to let these excellent people do their jobs on their own without interference. We do not need major surgery — especially not from uninformed casual critics.

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Since Lord Sutherland's Higher Education in Hong Kong — Report of the University Grants Committee (March 2002) three more reports were published by the UGC, namely Report on the 1998-2001 Triennium (6 December 2002), Hong Kong Higher Education : To Make a Difference, To Move with the Times (January 2004) and Hong Kong Higher Education — Integration Matters (3 March 2004). The 1998-2001 Triennium Report had the following to say about Hong Kong's universities during the period: Since mid-1990s, the landscape and focus of higher education in Hong Kong have begun to change gradually, evolving to cope with and cater for new demands arisen from the developments in H o n g Kong, and new challenges posed by H o n g Kong's competitors. The higher education sector was seen to b e p a y i n g i n c r e a s i n g e m p h a s i s to quality a n d to t h e p u r s u i t of international excellence, a sign of growing maturity in the provision of and approach to higher education. This shift in focus gained m o m e n t u m over the triennium from 1998 to 2001.

By all accounts this is an accurate assessment of the situation. The UGC was quick to take credit for these achievements: In respect of teaching, while a culture of self-improvement was embedded in the institutions, the UGC sought to promote institutions' performance t h r o u g h various reviews a n d funding s c h e m e s d u r i n g t h e r e p o r t i n g triennium. Examples were the conduct of the second Teaching and Learning Q u a l i t y P r o c e s s Review, t h e c o n t i n u e d d i s b u r s e m e n t of T e a c h i n g Development Grants and Language Enhancement Grants, etc. O n the side of research, quality and quantity in research activities grew h a n d in h a n d in the reporting triennium. A prosperous and deepening research culture was developing in Hong Kong, which was partly attributed to the continued support from the UGC and its Research Grants Council, as well as funding from other sources. This was evidenced in the rising level of university expenditure on research from 0.29% of the H o n g Kong GDP in the preceding triennium, to 0.39% in the reporting one.

Beyond doubt, support by the UGC by way of funding has allowed the universities to make big strides towards teaching and research excellence. However, the belief that a policy of active pushing and twisting will enable Hong Kong's universities to achieve excellence is totally misplaced. Quite the contrary, only excellent people working on their own initiatives can produce excellent results. Excellent people when pushed and twisted will achieve much less, not more. The two latest documents from the UGC, unfortunately, suggest that it wants to push and twist, in the hope that the golden-egg laying duck will lay more golden eggs. I will argue that all this is folly. If anything, excellence is going to suffer. Rather than enhancing Hong Kong's competitiveness or making Hong Kong into "the education hub of the region," which the Secretary for Education and

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Manpower envisions for Hong Kong, excessive intervention will instead suppress creativity, hurt innovation, and reduce Hong Kong to mediocrity.

Excellence Has to Grow on Fertile Soil Clearly, the UGC rightly wants and demands "excellence," and understands that excellence cannot be taken for granted and that there is a trade-off between excellence (quality) and quantity. If resources are spread too thin it will be difficult to achieve excellence. Among a cohort of students, only a few will achieve true excellence. The logic appears to carry over to universities. Since we have eight universities in Hong Kong (the Hong Kong Institute of Education is a "university" just like other universities in Hong Kong), grooming a few promising ones into "world-class universities" according to this logic appears to make sense. This is also the logic behind the Sutherland Report. It is also thought that "duplication" is wasteful. With an increasingly tight budget, to achieve the greatest bang for the buck, "wasteful duplication" must be stopped. This is the logic behind the dictum for "role differentiation" among Hong Kong's universities. What appears to be right, unfortunately, is all wrong. Excellence is best achieved when motivated people are allowed to work on their own in areas they believe their capability and interest lie. Quality suffers when they are given assignments and when their roles are handed down from above. This is especially true with universities. The academic staff now working in Hong Kong's universities have been recruited through world-wide recruitment during a time when the budget was less tight. Highly qualified, highly motivated individuals have been hired over the years, and they came to Hong Kong with the expectation that they could enjoy academic freedom with adequate resource support. They know where their abilities lie and, with few exceptions, they do their research work and undertake their teaching duties conscientiously. A fair assessment of their performance, such as the 1998-2001 Triennium Report, indicates that they have been doing just fine. For the highly qualified, highly motivated professionals, the worst nightmare is being told what to do and what not to do. Consider the following message from a recent UGC report, Hong Kong Higher Education: To Make a Difference, To Move with the Times, published in January 2004: To fulfill the above, the UGC will need to become a much more proactive player, and, as stated in the Higher Education Review: "strengthen its role in strategic planning and policy development, so as to advise and steer the degree awarding sector." The UGC has to ensure that at the system level, appropriate tools, mechanisms and incentives are in place to steer institutions towards clear role differentiation, to facilitate deep collaboration a m o n g

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institutions in advancement of their respective roles, and to allow excellence to emerge through fair and constructive competition. Hong Kong needs a h i g h e r e d u c a t i o n sector with institutions o p e r a t i n g in distinctive b u t collaborative and complementary roles. Each institution should have unique areas of strength which will add value to the overall sector. T h e UGC must ensure that each institution is faithful to its role.

The role that the UGC thus defines for itself is that of a central planner. But central planning has never really worked anywhere. With the UGC trying to be "proactive" and trying to "steer" the degree awarding sector, the fertile soil for excellence in Hong Kong may be lost. This is potentially dangerous for the well being of Hong Kong over the long term. The damage may be bigger or smaller, depending on how artificial or natural the specified role differentiations for the universities are. If historical developments have already shaped a university into a particular role, and the same role is being required of that university, the damage will be smaller. But even in this case, there will be damage to the extent that universities are dynamic and evolving. Comparative advantages may change. Assigned roles hamper the evolution process and thus compromise excellence. Another risk to academic excellence comes from pay structure reform. Given an increasingly tight budget, universities are tempted to change the pay structures of their staff. Already benefits have been cut and salaries have been reduced. But on top of that, some universities are thinking of doing away with annual increments. Some are halving these increments and some are thinking of doing away with these increments altogether, and replacing them with annual bonuses based on performance in the year. Such initiatives are highly damaging for Hong Kong's ability to attract good staff. Potential candidates will regard working in Hong Kong as unattractive, not only because the initial pay and benefits have been reduced, but also because the prospect for higher pay in the future is limited. Moreover, they may have to be under the gun every year, and their performance will be rated every year, lest their bonus will be taken away and their pay is no different from an entry level assistant professor. Excellent professionals want to work freely and they work hard, but they hate to work under the gun. They also need recognition. No one disputes the arguments behind merit-based pay. But the principle of merit-based pay is not incompatible with a pay scale that rewards loyalty and recognizes experience and cumulative achievements. Consider a regime with no distinction between assistant professor, associate professor, and professor, a regime that never rewards anyone with a rank promotion, but instead only gives out bonuses based on a year's performance. Not only will the university's ability to attract high-calibre staff be considerably reduced, but also so will any sense of loyalty to the university be damaged. Because the bonuses are also given very selectively, such a system is likely to destroy collegiality and any sense of a family.

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Apart from an attractive and reasonable pay package that attracts and rewards excellent people reasonably, and giving due respect for academic freedom so these excellent people can work in areas of their own choice based on a knowledge of their own backgrounds and abilities (which the UGC and bureaucrats certainly do not possess), the "fertile soil to breed excellence" includes non-monetary recognition for good work. In particular, the Hong Kong government has been systematically ignoring much of the very good policy research produced by local academics. For example, it preferred to hire the likes of Harvard and Berkeley from overseas to make recommendations for its healthcare reform. Similarly, with regard to income support programmes for the elderly, the Hong Kong government hired two separate consulting firms to produce two totally different sets of recommendations, largely ignoring input from the local academia. This is extremely frustrating for policy researchers especially when they are often asked by the overseas consultants to provide expertise and local knowledge gratis. In the 2004 Policy Address, the Chief Executive Mr Tung Chee-hwa had this to say: We need to do more public policy research, particularly from a macro and long-term perspective. Objective and concrete public policy research will help us better realize the objectives of effective governance. It will help us avoid sweeping, politicised and emotional policy debates, thus making it easier for the Government and various sectors of the community to reach a consensus on public issues. This will ensure that our policies are implemented more effectively and better able to serve the long-term development needs of Hong Kong. At present, public policy research is not being pursued vigorously within the Government and in the community, and there are not enough experts in this area.

It is true that among academia, there may be different views based on different analyses, but to say that "public policy research is not being pursued vigorously ... in the community" is certainly wrong. As far as I know, there are at least seven policy research centres or institutes in UGC-funded universities, not to speak of the various privately funded think-tanks, at Lingnan University, at the Polytechnic University, at the City University, at the University of Hong Kong, and at the Chinese University. To encourage excellence, the government can, from time to time, invite different policy researchers to make presentations, and senior policy makers from the government would question them critically. Only after such "grilling" and after considering all the different perspectives and evidence should the government decide which way to go. Ignoring their good work will not foster excellence. Giving them the attention that they deserve will.

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Best in the World Versus Best for Hong Kong The first recommendation in the Sutherland Report says that "a small number of institutions [should] be strategically identified as the focus of public and private sector support with the explicit intention of creating institutions capable of competing at the highest international levels." This can be summed up as "to be the best in the world." But is "best in the world" the best for Hong Kong? Is it not more important that our universities serve the best interests of Hong Kong? The universities in Hong Kong are supported with public money and should serve Hong Kong's interests. Do we want to have a Harvard University in Hong Kong? Perhaps Stanford? How about Princeton? There is no question these are great universities, but a replica of these universities, even if achievable, may not really serve Hong Kong well. These universities are great in many respects, but many of our local universities are better than they are when it comes to analyzing local problems and finding appropriate policy responses that meet Hong Kong's needs. Why do we want to compete with the likes of these great universities? How do we propose to do that? By conducting more rigorous Research Assessment Exercises? By Teaching and Learning Quality Process Reviews? By top-slicing funds and conducting a winner-takes-all game? By giving out Teaching Excellence Awards? Perhaps Research Excellence Awards? The answers to these questions are most certainly No. Excellent people achieve their dreams with drive from within, and seldom out of pressures from without, especially when those pressures come from uninformed but powerful people. Excellent people say: "Leave us alone. Let us have a bit more time to work. Give us a break. Give us support if you can, but please reduce unnecessary paper work and futile meetings." There is no doubt that the quality of the people who are hired is really the most important factor behind a university's rise to excellence or decline to mediocrity. If you hire the wrong people, RAEs (Research Assessment Exercise) and TLQPRs (Teaching and Learning Quality Process Review) and TEAs (Teaching Excellence Awards) are unlikely to turn them around materially. If you hire the right people, people who are self-motivated, people who teach and conduct research because they have a passion for these activities, RAEs, TLQPRs, and TEAs are disruptive of their work and are almost certainly harmful to quality. This is not to say that all the talk about role differentiation and promoting synergy and cooperation among institutions is not meaningful or is wrong. Quite the contrary. Different institutions and different people do have different strengths and weaknesses. So role differentiation is natural. But role differentiation must not come from above or from bureaucrats. Rather, role

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differentiation is the result of interaction and many iterations of adjustment between universities and their staff on the one hand, and the society at large on the other hand. To foster "synergy," it is highly desirable to set up territory-wide research institutes much like the Chinese Academy of Science and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Researchers from all universities can affiliate with these institutes and can work together in projects or engage in various forms of exchange of ideas. This way, all the research capabilities of the universities can be taken advantage of, while unnecessary duplications of research efforts can be avoided. At the same time, various government departments and bureaus can take advantage of these research institutes by commissioning them to conduct research pertinent to Hong Kong. This way, greater effectiveness and incentives for research will be achieved.

Quantity Versus Quality A perennial question that policy makers and universities must face is the tradeoff between quantity and quality. In particular, over the last two decades, the availability of university places has been increased from roughly 3 percent of the age cohort to almost 18 percent (see Figure 4.1.) Does this mean that quality must therefore suffer? 20.0%

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With a rapid surge in university enrolment, average quality unavoidably has to come down. But this does not imply that the quality of universities has come down. Moreover, it also does not necessarily imply that the quality of the best graduates has come down. In the interest of the community, the ideal is to allow each student to develop to his fullest potential. This implies that we should not allow the decline in average quality to adversely affect the opportunities of the sharpest minds to take on the greatest challenges appropriate to them. The logic is simple. Suppose only 2 percent of an age cohort has the potential to be truly outstanding: when the opportunity for higher education has been expanded, while 18 percent of the age cohort, rather than the previous 2 percent, can now attend university. We must not then take away the opportunity of the best 2 percent to develop their full potential. Only this way the expansion of the tertiary education sector will not be a drag to society. Only this way can we preserve excellence. This means that professors at universities should attempt to allow a dual track of development for their students. The fast track will allow the brightest and the most motivated students to take on more difficult material. The average track will cater to the needs and abilities of the average. This way, quality will not suffer, and excellence can still be achieved.

Insights from Overseas Experience and Scholars on University Reform The urge to shape up the university and to achieve excellence was clearly behind the recent university reform at Beijing University. Since February 2004, associate professors in arts and sciences and lecturers in all subjects have been offered employment contracts of up to 12 years and, if they should be found not to meet the requirements of the university in performance, they face dismissal. Otherwise they will be promoted as professors and offered permanent, or tenured, positions. This is a big change from the earlier system, in which university teaching staff were almost automatically treated as tenured, so that dismissing them was very difficult. The new system is to be applauded for two reasons. First, the university tries its best to find good staff and gives newly hired staff a period that is long enough to prove that they are good. Second, if they are found to be good, they will be promoted and become tenured staff. From then on their academic freedom is well respected. There appears to be little hampering their research or teaching activities from the outside. If universities are at the forefront of the evolution of ideas, then "enterprising" appears to be an apt description for universities (Williams, 2003). But just as the idea of excellence is difficult to define clearly, so is the

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idea of enterprising university. If the enterprising university means "corporatized" university, where profit is the bottom line and profitability is the measure of excellence, the future for humanity will be bleak (Evans). In her view "enterprise" is a threat to the university's traditional values of disinterested thought analysis and pursuit of truth (see Evans 2002: 1-4). But universities can be enterprising in the sense of being bold and innovative, and still abide by the basic values of justice and freedom. A recent experiment in Japan, as a matter of fact, does set out to "corporatize" its universities. Its national universities as of April 2004 became independent corporations. This means that instead of having their budgets controlled primarily by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), they will be responsible for its own budget, staffing and other matters. While universities gain more autonomy, they are required to remain publicly accountable, and that means that they have to file action plans with MEXT. Funding allocation is supposed to be based on performance in relation to the filed plans. Even though the word "corporatize" is used, fortunately there is no implication that universities have to be in the first instance accountable to the market. Without implying that the market should not have any role in shaping our universities, it appears that the enlightened minds of today agree that autonomy and freedom are fundamental to the existence of socially responsible universities, and that financial uncertainty and an excessive dose of market-place culture and bureaucratic interference remain the main threats to true excellence of our universities.

Conclusions Hong Kong's universities are at a crossroads. Having made huge strides over the past two decades in terms of governance and scholarship, and while excellence has been clearly within reach, they are now facing the prospect of having to go down a fast track to mediocrity. Notwithstanding the lip service to excellence that the UGC and the Hong Kong government have paid in regard to the tertiary education sector, two major bombshells can almost guarantee that the way onward is not forward to excellence but downward to mediocrity. These two are: a dramatic drying up of funds, and excessive intervention from central planners. Over the past two decades, particularly over the last ten years, Hong Kong's universities enjoyed the advantage of being able to offer an attractive pay package and the promise of academic freedom and had been quite successful in luring some of the brightest minds in the world to Hong Kong. From now on, with funding sharply reduced, Hong Kong's ability to draw new staff has been reduced drastically. With the prospect of salaries having been reduced

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sharply and probably frozen for years, the promise of possible annual bonuses based on merit is simply not attractive. Even more worrying, the most independent minds, those that will work on their own b u t hate to be pushed around, will shun H o n g Kong. Unfortunately for Hong Kong, these are the most likely minds to produce good scholarship and true excellence.

5 Sub-Degrees and the 60 Percent Post-Secondary Target Charles Wong

O n e of the major developments of higher education in recent years has been the rapid expansion of sub-degree programmes in Hong Kong. This chapter examines the conditions before the development, the m o m e n t u m for change and the problems to be addressed in such an expansion. It also discusses the issue of viability of the government intention to achieve a 60 percent participation rate in higher education for the relevant age cohort and issues associated with the sustainability of this new initiative.

Situation Before Year 2000 According to the Education Commission (Progress Report on the Education Reform, June 2003) there are seven key areas of education reform in Hong Kong. They include curriculum reform, language education, support for schools, the professional development of teachers, admission systems, assessment mechanisms, and increasing post-secondary education. While six of the seven key areas deal with the improvement of school education, the seventh area addresses the issue of under-provision of post-secondary education. The underprovision is massive by any standards. Let us consider the situation before the year 2000. With the advent of nine years of compulsory education in 1978, most children have the chance to complete Secondary 3 (S3). However, the options available and attractive to S3 leavers have been rather limited. The fact that every year about 30 percent of students do not progress to S4 (Education and Manpower Bureau, 2003) and beyond within the school system, does raise serious concerns. The next major obstacle in progression starts at the Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination (HKCEE) level where about 60 percent of students pass with five subjects including English and Chinese, considered an overall pass for school leaving purposes and the minimal entry qualification for any kind of post-secondary study. Of those with an overall pass, roughly 50

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percent progress to matriculation level courses, of which 50 percent go on to degree programmes. Only 14 500 out of 85 000 or 17 percent are able to progress to degree programmes. How many of the remaining 83 percent of the age cohort progress to postsecondary education? The government target had been another 12 percent to be catered for through recognised and subsidized sub-degree programmes aiming to produce technician-level graduates. The programmes have been provided through the two former polytechnics (City University of Hong Kong and Hong Kong Polytechnic University) and the Vocational Training Council (VTC) mostly in the form of Higher Diploma (HD) programmes. They were taking onto two or three year programmes those students who could not get into degree programmes after taking A-levels, and good HKCEE performers. The only other recognised post-secondary programmes have been offered by Shue Yan College which were not subsidized and the honours diplomas were not particularly well articulated in Hong Kong.

Elitist Approach The situation reflected the traditional elite / technician split approach to postsecondary education with more government subsidized provision for elites and less for technicians. The situation came about for two reasons. First, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, as the Hong Kong economy was transforming from manufacturing-based to service-based, the need for a better educated workforce was obvious but there was, at the same time, no need to increase the number of technicians. The narrow view existed that more technicians for manufacturing were not required, but rather that sub-degree holders were seen as para-professionals. Although many service industries have a need for para-professionals, this was not fully understood at the time because "technicians" were interpreted to be strictly technical in nature. Programmes offered at sub-degree level also did n o t c h a n g e d greatly from the manufacturing era. There were always more applications than places available for sub-degree programmes because they were heavily subsidized even though there were very few appropriate jobs for the graduates of some of the disciplines. Institutions, too, had no motivation to change because a loss of jobs was at stake.

Virtual Monopoly Another part of the problem was an approach to education that has been practised in Hong Kong for a long while; that institutions created by government to meet certain education or training needs were given a virtual

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monopoly because they were the sole recipients of government subsidies to support the related programmes. In practice, non-subsidized institutions that were more market-oriented could not compete because of the absence of subsidies, there was no mechanism for them to validate their programmes, and their awards could not obtain government recognition for employment purposes. The subsidized institutions had no motivation to change. Even today, looking through the programmes on offer, some are clearly still out of sync with Hong Kong's present needs. Non-subsidized providers had another inherent disadvantage. Legislation which they operate under is contained in the Education Ordinance (EO) which was designed for regulating primary and secondary schools. The legislation, and its associated regulations, is very restrictive in terms of fee collection, building requirements and mode of operation. In all, there are only four types of legislation regulating education in Hong Kong; apart from the Education Ordinance, they are the Post-secondary Education Ordinance (PSO) which applies only to Shue Yan College, the Non-local Higher and Professional Education Ordinance (NLO) which came into effect in 1997 and institution-specific ordinances (ISOs) for statutory education bodies covering all local universities, the Hong Kong Institute of Education (HKIEd) and for statutory training councils covering vocational and other training councils. Institutions with their own ordinances have enormous freedom to offer all kinds of programmes while those without have to battle numerous barriers before courses can be offered. One of the largest providers of post-secondary programmes in Hong Kong, apart from centres for non-local programmes, is the Hong Kong Management Association. Much of the association's work is still regulated by the Education Ordinance and thus severely handicapped. One of the Caritas Adult and Higher Education Service colleges was recently given permission to operate under the PSO but approval involved years of preparation.

Need for Change By the turn of the millennium, the government came to realise that Hong Kong had to transform itself again from a mainly service-based economy to knowledge-based. Competitors in the region, including Shanghai, have greater participation rates in higher education or have much higher education targets than Hong Kong. In his Policy Speech of 2000, Hong Kong's Chief Executive announced the territory would strive for a much higher participation rate of 60 percent in higher education in 10 years. This became a most challenging target particularly as the territory was in the midst of a worst possible economic storm. With the Asian financial crisis of 1997-1998, the economy took a turn for the worse with the government facing substantial fiscal deficits for the ensuing years.

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Difficulties The problem was been how to strive for a higher participation rate in higher education to stay competitive in an environment of dwindling resources, major economic re-structuring and resistance to institutional changes. In the runup to the change of sovereignty, Hong Kong had about ten years of high inflation with the cost of higher education growing to an alarming level. The total average cost for undergraduate study per student grew to more than HK$200 000 a year, the figure for a sub-degree student was about 50 to 60 percent of it (EMB, 2003). Fees charged recovered less than 20 percent of the cost, not including capital costs. Operating costs for a secondary student were less than half of sub-degree student costs. The budget set aside for allocation (recurrent expenditure) to the eight institutions of higher learning excluding the VTC through the University Grants Committee (UGC) was in the order of HK$11 billion a year (UGC, 2004). The total education budget accounted for about 22 percent of the total government expenditure (EMB, 2004) while the h i g h e r education sector (subsidized sub-degree, undergraduate, postgraduate) serving about 80 000 students accounted for roughly one third of the education budget with the other sectors, serving about one million students, having to make do with the remaining two-thirds. Even in these difficult times, the Hong Kong government continued to increase the education budget by a small percentage every year but clearly the split between basic and higher education could no longer be moved in favour of the latter. If the existing form and percentage of subsidy to higher education is fully retained, doubling of the participation rate will cost an extra few billion dollars a year which the government clearly can not afford.

Solutions The possibility of expanding provision through a marginal costing model was quickly dismissed. The idea was to modestly increase funding to existing institutions that have most of the required infrastructure while substantially increasing the number of students. The prevailing mentality in subsidized institutions was that any such move would be a ploy by the government to deny them their rightful funding; the government should always pay at more or less the same rate to get quality programmes. One sector in Hong Kong education, however, has a long tradition of offering programmes in the absence of subsidy. The sector, made up of mostly the continuing education units (CEUs) of tertiary institutions and other nonsubsidized continuing education providers, has been offering programmes of all kinds and at various levels for adult learners including degree programmes leading to overseas awards. Demand from working adults for award-bearing

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programmes increased greatly in the 1990s. The needs were not addressed by departments of local universities because they did not see themselves having the obligation to serve the target groups involved. Income from each student for such programmes was a small fraction of income from regular students which comprises of tuition fees and a government subsidy per head, so there was no incentive either. The part-time mode of continuing education makes it essential for the CEUs to operate at prevailing market rates for its expenditure, and to make the best use of marginal costing in relation to its parent institutions. It was this sector that the government eventually turned to for help in achieving the 60 percent target. The sector was well organised, all the universities were members of the Federation for Continuing Education in Tertiary Institutions (FCE), the other members were HKIEd, VTC and Caritas and Board members of the Federation had been largely drawn from the CEUs of the institutions. In 1999, the Education Commission proposed the diversification of higher education in Hong Kong in one of its consultation documents (EMB, 1999) without specific suggestions on how to go about it. This was followed by more specific suggestions on the development of community colleges (EMB, 2000). Some of the CEUs viewed this as a potential area for development and responded by offering full-time Associate Degree (AD) programmes in 2000. Many of the continuing education providers dedicated classrooms which were heavily utilized during the evening but mostly idle during the day. Full-time programmes complemented their work very nicely.

Issues To achieve the 60 percent target, it was obvious the great majority of increase would need to come at the sub-degree level rather than the undergraduate level, at least in the short term. It was also obvious that programmes involving substantial equipment and laboratories would not be viable. The focus, therefore, would be on how to address issues associated with a rapid development of sub-degree programmes: fee level, capacity, compatibility, and quality assurance.

Fee Level and Cost Structure A working group was formed by the government to gather information on the existing operating costs of teaching and support of continuing education providers, as well as space requirements. The major differences between fulltime and part-time programmes are in the areas of student, academic and

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other support functions: infrastructural items such as libraries, recreational facilities, and counselling. Because of a drastic change in the employment situation in recent years, there was a pool of well qualified and experienced instructors willing to work at a much lower salary level. Private providers had lower operating costs all along. Given these factors, it was quickly determined that it would be viable to offer full-time ADs for about HK$40 000 to HK$50 000 a year. The only major problem was in capital costs. Most providers were able to make use of their existing premises to introduce new programmes but, if and when they proved successful and attracted capacity numbers, new premises would then to be found. Operating costs were assumed to consist of four major components: instruction, academic and s t u d e n t support, administration, a n d accommodation. All needed to be paid from fees. Budgets were calculated on the basis of start-up operations, which mean that salary levels were at prevailing low market rates rather than rates at subsidized institutions. Since 1997, market rates for full-time instructors have fallen by a huge margin while normal university pay scales have remained relatively stable. Even at two-thirds or onehalf of the university salary level, good instructors could still be attracted. Selffinancing operations usually hired instructors and administrative staff on contract terms and were thus able to follow the general downward trend of the market. In general, start-up operations enjoyed much lower cost structures than existing operations. In the event, programmes which did not require expensive equipment and facilities proved to be the most popular. These factors all contributed to the relatively low cost structure of self-financing subdegree programmes.

Compatibility In 2000, the year of the first AD programmes for Hong Kong, each of the AD providers had a different scheme for their programmes: entry requirements, the total amount of credit load and duration were all different. The Education and Manpower Bureau (EMB) commissioned the FCE to prepare a study of ADs and to propose a set of common descriptors for use in Hong Kong. With all the main providers involved, it only took a few months to arrive at a consensus. Separately, the Hong Kong Council for Academic Accreditation (HKCAA) had been pondering an appropriate common structure for ADs and higher diplomas. The differences between the two approaches were relatively minor. The EMB accepted the majority of the recommendations and announced the Common Descriptors (EMB, 2001) for ADs in 2001 and each of the providers made every effort to comply. Students could progress to subdegree programmes and thus higher education either through the traditional Form 6/7 (matriculation course) route or, alternatively, pursue a three-year

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higher diploma programme or a one-year pre-AD programme and two-year AD programme from HKCEE. The exercise resolved the compatibility issue and laid the basis for the rapid development of self-financing sub-degree programmes in Hong Kong.

Capacity Before 2000, the participation rate in higher education was about 30 percent, comprising 18 percent in undergraduate programmes and 12 percent in subsidized sub-degree programmes. To achieve the 60 percent participation rate, another 30 percent was required. But the obvious question was: are enough capable students available and able to undertake higher education and benefit. Although about 60 percent of an age cohort obtains an overall HKCEE pass, it was not obvious that all of them would like to, and could afford to, proceed to higher education. On the other hand, competition for the first 30 percent of places was keen; so assumptions were safely made that another 15 percent capacity could be easily filled. To answer the question of whether there are enough capable and willing students to fill the last 15 percent, the question must be turned around to whether those with a mere HKCEE pass are capable of progression and whether there are capable students among those who fail. Experiences in a different setting suggest that the 60 percent is attainable, subject to market forces. In the early 1990s, it was widely assumed that higher education was for the few and that "second-rate" students taking higher diploma programmes were not undergraduate material. It was also widely assumed that those who were unable to obtain an overall pass at HKCEE were not worthy of further education. Both assumptions have been shattered by recent developments. Continuing education providers who have been providing top-up programmes (from higher diploma to degree level over two-year part-time study) since the 1990s have noticed that the outcome of such programmes has been very similar to full-time degree programmes. That is, the distribution of awards (first, second upper and lower and so on) is comparable to cases of regular students engaged in full-time study. Of course, those entering top-up programmes are generally better students, but still the phenomenon clearly indicated that many of those who were screened out of degree programmes could perform well at degree level as working adults. Every year, hundreds of higher diploma holders travelled overseas to complete top-up programmes to degree level. The feedback from overseas institutions was generally favourable and the success rate was high. It can be concluded that university entrance examinations had screened out many who were capable of degree education. Another initiative in the year 2000 impacted sub-degree work in Hong Kong, and again involved the FCE. Of the 85 000 candidates for HKCEE

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every year, close to 20 000 were unable to get a pass in any subject and another 20 000 were unable to obtain an overall pass in five subjects including English and Chinese. Apart from taking the examination again (and close to 30 000 did this with a very low success rate), there was nothing to help these students. The EMB was determined to do something and the FCE was asked to put together a remedial programme. The outcome was Project Yi Jin, a bundled approach with ten modules of which six were core, and passing all ten modules was deemed to be equivalent to five passes at HKCEE including English and Chinese. 1 The curriculum was completely different from that of the HKCEE. Since its inception, about 3000 to 4000 students a year have participated in the programme with about 60 percent being successful. Many also successfully progressed to sub-degree programmes. It can be concluded that a substantial proportion of the HKCEE failures were in fact capable students given an appropriate curriculum and environment. Many of those who obtained mere HKCEE passes progressed to sub-degree programmes and are now graduating in their thousands every year. It therefore appears that sufficient numbers of capable students are available. The market will, in the end, determine whether the 60 percent target is achievable; in other words, whether there are sufficient students wanting higher education at prevailing market prices and can realise the value of higher education in the work place. The difference between the salary of a degree graduate and that of a sub-degree holder after three to five years of work has been greatly reduced. In fact, differences in the average starting pay of degree, sub-degree and secondary school leavers have been compressed to two to three thousand dollars as opposed to tens of thousands only five years ago. It appears that most people still believe that better education provides an edge in obtaining employment and better long term prospect even in financial hard times.

Quality Assurance On the issue of quality assurance, many of the providers are CEUs of universities and should be well versed in the QA system of higher education. However, in previous third party audits of universities, CEUs were never audited for this purpose so there were arguments about whether this should be verified independently. This led to a special group formed under the UGC in the Teaching and Learning Quality Process Review (TLQPR) of local universities to audit the work of CEUs in 2003. Reports of the audit were released in 2004 and no major problems were raised. For the other providers, EMB has outlined a programme accreditation scheme which involved both institutional and programme accreditation.

Sub-Degrees and the 60 Percent Post-Secondary Target

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Support Measures Although it was established that AD programmes can be economically viable at HK$40 000 to HK$50 000 a year, start up money and investment on premises as well as student loans, were outstanding issues. In 2001, the government came up with four support measures. They were grants and loans for students in self-financing programmes; loans to institutions for start-up, premises, and accreditation costs; and land at nominal prices. The government also took the lead and recognised ADs for posts which previously required higher degree qualifications. The arrangement of grants, loans and means-tested loans for students of government-subsidized programmes through the Student Financial Assistance Agency has been a long standing practice of government and was extended to students taking accredited self-financing programmes. The EMB made tremendous efforts to locate sites suitable for education development and came up with eight for bidding in 2002. The sites only carry a nominal price and providers can also apply for a loan to finance the development of the site. Alternatively, providers can apply for a loan to renovate buildings for teaching purposes either rented or purchased. Separately, providers can apply for start-up loans based on the number of projected students. Hence, by providing loans to the providers, and grants and loans to students, with the AD Common Descriptor in place, and an accreditation process managed by HKCAA for non-university providers, the circle is complete. The sub-degree system, the quality assurance mechanism and the money both for consumers and vendors are all in place; it appears that the necessary conditions have been created.

Rapid growth Between 2001-2002 and 2003-2004, events moved rapidly. The following tables show the rapid growth of self-financing post-secondary programmes. Table 5.1 Growth of self-financing post-secondary programmes — institutions, AD, HD (higher diplomas), degree programmes and intake enrolments Institutions

AD

HD

Degree

Total

Students

2001-2002

11

16

22

3

41

6829

2002-2003

16

46

31

7

84

9000

2003-2004

20

74

38

11

123

not yet released

2004-2005

20

92

81

26

199

not yet released

Year

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Charles Wong

Table 5.2 Growth of participation rate in higher education, all programmes Year

Participation rate in higher education

Year to year growth

2000-2001

32%

-

2001-2002

38%

2002-2003

42%

+6% +4%

Table 5.3 Entry qualifications for self-financing post-secondary programmes Year

Matriculation course or equivalent

HKCEE holders

2001-2002

54%

46%

2002-2003

60%

40%

Table 5.4 Distribution of self-financing post-secondary programmes by type Year

AD

HD

Degree

2001-2002

55%

42%

3%

2002-2003

30%

67%

3%

Table 5.5 Distribution of self-financing post-secondary programmes by discipline Year

Liberal Studies

Humanities & Social Sciences

Business & Management

Education & Language

Science & Technology

2001-2002

34%

16%

38%

2%

10%

2002-2003

12%

28%

41%

2%

17%

Source: EMB, http://www.emb.gov.hk/

With an established accreditation mechanism in place, some institutions are making good use of the process for self-financing programmes not only for sub-degrees; a good example is Shue Yan College which has three degree programmes accredited and qualified for all the support measures. Overseas sub-degree programmes, which only used to operate under the Non-local Higher and Professional Education Ordinance, can also be put forward for accreditation and are eligible for support.

Reaction of Stakeholders From the enrolment figures, it can be seen that students are taking up the sub-degree option in huge numbers. Bearing in mind that there are not really any other viable options available to them if they cannot get into subsidized degree or sub-degree programmes, self-financing sub-degree programmes at least allow them to progress to the next level. In spite of the fact that, at first,

Sub-Degrees and the 60 Percent Post-Secondary Target

61

not many parents and career counsellors understood the new arrangements, students can at least take comfort that there are programmes which are recognized by the government and that grants and low interest loans are available. Many of enrolled students believe they have a second chance of getting into a degree programme if they perform well in the first year of AD programmes. This is borne out in practice because defecting to degree programmes after the first year has been generally high in recent years, both for self-financing and subsidized programmes. This is a well tried method. In short, students have a rich choice of disciplines, providers and locations. Formerly these students did not have any attractive progression opportunities, now they are keenly sought after by providers. At first, the media and many in education branded the initiative as a dead end pathway but, within a couple of years, dozens of full-time top-up programmes in addition to numerous existing part-time programmes leading to both local and overseas degrees have sprung up and the community as a whole has embraced the new pathway to higher education. Together with Project Yi Jin, there is now a completely new pathway, previously not available, which is open to thousands of students per year. In the face of this rapid growth, universities which previously saw this as just another initiative for the CEUs, now see it as a major area for development for entire institutions. For the private providers, it is the first time they have had a real opportunity to make headway into full-time post-secondary education previously restricted to participation of subsidized higher education institutions. They still feel they suffer an unfair disadvantage when compared to self-accrediting institutions. Self-financing providers also believe the playing field is tilted in favour of subsidized programmes, especially in disciplines being offered by both types of provider. This will no longer be the case when the government implements its decision to phase out subsidies to most sub-degree programmes save those which are unable to be viable to be offered on a selffinancing basis and those where there is special social need. The government is pleased with the rapid growth and feels the trend is on target for the 60 percent higher education participation rate. However, all new initiatives require close tracking not just in numbers, forums among the various stakeholders, research and reflection. This is sadly absent at the moment and may jeopardise the long term sustainability of the development.

Conclusions It can be seen that the rapid development of the sub-degree sector has been one of the major developments of higher education in Hong Kong in recent years. Unlike other key areas of education reform, it is relatively free from

62 Charles Wong controversy and generally welcomed by the whole community. It laid the foundation for the achievement of 60 percent participation in higher education and the development of private universities. Once the framework for development is in place, market forces take over from central planning by the government. On the other hand, with such large student numbers, there is a great need for further monitoring, research and the exchange of experiences to ensure continuing success which is not yet in place.

6 Reforming the University Admission System in Singapore: Lessons for Hong Kong Jason Tan

In 1999 the Singapore government announced reforms to the undergraduate admission system for the two public universities. From 2003 onwards, universities considered not only the performance of applicants in national examinations, but also their performance in the SAT I reasoning test, project work, and participation in co-curricular activities. T h e reforms were aimed at better preparing students for what the government perceived as the needs of an emergent knowledge economy. In addition, the reforms were supposed to dovetail with concurrent government-mandated curricular emphases in primary schools, secondary schools, a n d j u n i o r colleges. This chapter outlines the genesis of the reforms. More importantly, it comments critically on prospects for the success of the reforms. Lessons are also drawn for c u r r e n t attempts by the H o n g Kong g o v e r n m e n t to reform the local undergraduate admission system in the territory.

Policies regarding student selection and admission to higher education continue to be controversial around the world. The major points of contention relate to ensuring a match between higher education courses and economic development, as well as to questions of fairness, efficiency, consistency, transparency, and equitable access (see for instance, Harman, 1994; Klitgaard, 1986; Lemann, 1999; Zeng, 1999). At the same time, selection and admission criteria create incentives for secondary school students and teachers in terms of such matters as teaching and learning approaches, choice of particular subject combinations, and the amount of effort to be applied in a student's studies. There are recurring complaints about how creativity among students and teachers, and diversity in curricular provision, are being stifled as a result of a narrow pre-occupation with achieving outstanding results in university entrance examinations. In some school systems, students are chanelled or tracked into different academic streams long before the end of secondary school. There is also a neglect of non-academic activities in schools. Furthermore, students are often over-burdened with studies not only in school, but in cram schools outside of school hours.

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Jason Tan

Various governments have attempted to reform university admission criteria in an attempt to address as many of these pressing issues as possible. Reforms are often undertaken in the wider context of rapid growth in student enrolment, fuelled by rising aspirations for higher education on the part of students and their parents, even as there are increasing pressures on the growth of public funding for higher education. The rapid expansion of university intakes has raised questions about the quality of student ability and about the balance between meeting labour market needs, on the one hand, while catering to social demand for higher education, on the other (Harman, 1994). Some of the reforms have centred on broadening the scope of admission to encompass not only students' scores in university entrance examinations, but also individual assessment reports from secondary schools, admission interviews, evidence of certain desirable personal qualities, and letters of recommendation (see for instance, Education Commission, 2000). This article discusses the latest reforms to the Singapore undergraduate admission system that were announced in 1999. From 2003 onwards, both of the public-sector universities began considering not only the performance of applicants in the national General Certificate of Education (Advanced) Level examination, but also their performance in the SAT I reasoning test, project work and participation in co-curricular activities. The reforms are aimed at better preparing students for what the Singapore government perceives as the needs of an emergent knowledge economy. In addition, they are supposed to dovetail with concurrent government-mandated curricular emphases in primary schools, secondary schools, and junior colleges. This chapter outlines background factors that have led to the introduction of these reforms. It also comments critically on prospects for the reforms' success. What implications does the Singapore experience carry for the current attempts in Hong Kong to reform the local undergraduate admission system? Both the Singapore and Hong Kong governments have been speaking with increasing urgency over the past decade about the need for fundamental education reforms. Their concerns centre around the perception that current teaching and learning structures in primary and secondary schools are excessively g e a r e d towards the d e m a n d s of external examinations. Consequently, students are not being sufficiently imbued with skills, such as creative and innovative thinking, lifelong learning, and team spirit that both governments deem essential to the needs of economic competitiveness. There is the realization that both Singapore and Hong Kong can no longer survive on the basis of their former low-wage formula for economic success in earlier decades. Instead, the way forward appears to be investment in high-value-added economic activities, which in turn demands a shift in the demands of employers on school-leavers. Like the Singapore government, the Hong Kong government believes that the university admission system is overly focused on students' examination results, which in turn has a powerful backwash effect

Reforming the University Admission System in Singapore: Lessons for Hong Kong 65

on teaching and learning in primary and secondary schools (Education Commission, 2000). Reforming the current university admission system will thus reinforce current curricular reforms in primary and secondary schools and help develop all-rounded student development (see, for instance, Education and Manpower Bureau, 2004). In the light of these various similarities between Singapore and Hong Kong, the Singapore experience will definitely carry valuable lessons for Hong Kong as it attempts to tackle the issue of university admission criteria.

Changes in University Admission Criteria: Lead-up to the 1999 Reform Proposals Before the 1980s, admission to the two public-sector universities in Singapore at the time, the University of Singapore and the Nanyang University, was based solely on students' results in the Singapore-Cambridge General Certificate of Education (Advanced) Level (GCE A-level) examination. The first hint of change came in 1979 with the publication of a report on university education in Singapore. Frederick Dainton, a British professor and the author of the report, had been personally commissioned by the then Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew. His report noted, among other things, that for the purposes of university entrance there was "an excessive reliance on examination results" which he felt promoted in students an excessive reliance on rote learning as well as a passive attitude towards learning. He suggested that "other less commensurable but none-the-less significant qualities of applicants such as personal motivation and depth of interest" (Dainton, 1979, p. 1) should be determined through other means such as interviews and head teacher reports. In the wake of Dainton's report, Lee highlighted publicly the shortcomings of the existing admission system (Seah, 1983). In the early 1980s, several faculties in the National University of Singapore (NUS) (which resulted from a 1980 merger of the University of Singapore and the Nanyang University as a consequence of Dainton's report), such as medicine, dentistry, law, and architecture introduced a mixture of additional admission criteria including admission interviews, aptitude tests, and written tests. Dainton sounded his second note of caution regarding admission criteria when he was invited yet again in 1989 to review the development of university education in Singapore over the decade to come. While he felt that examinations were fair and provided an incentive for students to study hard in school, he pointed out the possibility of examination pressure distorting school processes. At the same time, GCE A-level examination performance was not an accurate predictor of ultimate performance in university courses. Dainton once again suggested the use of broader selection criteria to improve the accuracy of admission decisions. He also raised the possibility of admitting more mature students (Dainton, 1989).

66

Jason Tan

Dainton's report was published a few years after the publication of an official report by the Ministry of Trade and Industry. The report, which had been commissioned in the wake of the 1985-1986 economic recession, recommended the education of each individual to his or her maximum potential, the expansion of higher education intakes, and the development of creativity and flexible skills in order to maintain Singapore's economic competitiveness in the global economy (Ministry of Trade and Industry, 1986). The need for creativity and innovation was echoed in another report published by the same ministry in 1991 (Ministry of Trade and Industry, 1991). That same year, the Ministry of Education announced plans to dramatically expand higher education participation so that 40 percent of each age cohort would be enrolled in polytechnics (offering sub-degree level diploma programmes) and 20 percent in universities by the year 2000. It also promised more enrolment opportunities in the universities for polytechnic diploma holders and other mature students (Parliamentary Debates Singapore, 1992). As a result, undergraduate enrolment in the NUS and the Nanyang Technological University (NTU, which was established in 1991) grew substantially in the second half of the 1980s and the 1990s (see Table 6.1). This growth was fuelled in part by increases in GCE A-level examination pass rates during the same time period (see Table 6.2). Table 6.1 University undergraduate enrolment data, 1985-1997 Year

Total undergraduate enrolment in NUS and NTU

University undergraduate enrolment as a percentage of the primary one age cohort

1985

15 695

8

1990

22 005

15

1995

28 529

18

1997

30 934

20

Sources: Department of Statistics, 1998 and Ministry of Education, 2000a

Table 6.2 GCE A-level examination pass rates, 1985-1995 Year

GCE A-level examination percentage pass rate

1985

66.2

1990

76.5

1995

86.3

Sources: Ministry of Education, 1992 and Ministry of Education, 2000a

Amid this rapid expansion, however, nagging doubts were being expressed publicly about whether students in universities and schools were sufficiently equipped with the necessary skills to survive in the global economy. It was

Reforming the University Admission System in Singapore: Lessons for Hong Kong 67

becoming clear that teachers in schools were becoming increasingly skilled at preparing their students for the GCE A-level examination through the use of techniques such as the repeated practice of previous years' examination questions, providing students with ready-made answers to questions, predicting questions in forthcoming examinations, and the judicious selection of subjects and topics (Lee, 1996; Nirmala and Mathi, 1996). These techniques, which were also employed by out-of-school private tutors as well, were probably partly responsible for improving schools' examination results. Furthermore, it is likely that the practice since 1992 of encouraging aggressive inter-school competition by publicly ranking all junior colleges (offering pre-university courses) and secondary schools on the basis of students' results in public examinations accelerated the use of such techniques. University lecturers were voicing concern about the dearth of analytical a n d critical thinking skills a m o n g u n d e r g r a d u a t e s (Nirmala, 1995; Parliamentary Debates, 1989 and 1990). The Prime Minister, Goh Chok Tong, announced in 1996 that employers had, in a 1995 survey conducted by the Education Ministry, indicated their dissatisfaction with recent university graduates' creative and innovative thinking skills, as well as their ability to think across subject boundaries, exercise initiative, and work independently (Goh, 1997a). Goh further announced plans by the Education Ministry to review school curricula and assessment systems in order to foster creative and critical thinking skills. These plans were formally announced in 1997 in the form of the Thinking Schools policy initiative. The initiative included a reduction in curricular content from primary to pre-university levels to allow more time to be devoted to thinking skills and processes, and the broadening of assessments to incorporate inter-disciplinary projects (Ministry of Education, 1997b). A whole list of benefits, such as creative, critical, analytical and flexible thinking, the exercising of initiative, communication skills, problem solving, co-operative team work, and research skills were attributed to project work. The report noted the "test-wise" behaviour prevalent among Singapore students and claimed that assessment modes needed to be changed to trigger substantial changes in teaching and learning behaviour. Commenting on this policy initiative, the Prime Minister stressed that it had to instill a passion for learning among students instead of having them study merely for the purpose of obtaining good examination grades (Goh, 1997b). Several desirable skills for the global economy - creativity, entrepreneurship, innovation, knowledge application, independent thinking, and the ability to work in teams - were listed in an official Education Ministry document that outlined the final desired outcomes of formal education for every Singaporean (Ministry of Education, 1998). Just after the Thinking Schools initiative was announced, the Ministry of Education published the report of an external review team it had earlier

68

Jason Tan

commissioned to study the school system (Ministry of Education, 1997a). Team members noted that teachers' adeptness at drilling students in examination questions and answers had extended to those questions and answers involving "higher-order thinking skills." The report also noted with disapproval the pernicious effects of the public ranking of schools. Although project work was praised for its potential to develop creativity, teamwork, communication skills, and independent learning, the report lamented the fact that students often viewed projects as chores instead of as a means to develop their learning. In addition, teachers lacked adequate knowledge and time to guide students in their research. Besides recommending that the GCE A-level examination be revised to promote thinking and application skills, the report suggested that university admission should give due consideration to continuous assessment in school, participation in co-curricular activities, and personal attributes such as entrepreneurship and creative abilities. What was perhaps ironic about these criticisms of the school system was that they coincided with Singapore students' emerging ahead of their peers in other countries in the Third International Mathematics and Science Study. This accomplishment was lauded by the Education Ministry as affirming "confidence in our school system, curriculum and teaching methods" (Lee, 1997). It was pointed out that the study was "not made up of typical examination questions that our pupils are familiar with. [The test items] assessed them on creative problem-solving skills and their ability to respond to open-ended questions" (Chiang, 1999, p. 70). Meanwhile, the two universities were undertaking their own internal reforms in response to calls from the Prime Minister in 1996 to become "worldclass universities" that were research and intellectual hubs within Asia (Chua, 1996). Some of the measures taken included reviewing course curricula to place greater emphasis on creativity and thinking skills, as well as increasing the use of project-based assessment (Leong, 1997a, b). Universities began offering winners of local science talent competitions and international science olympiads direct admission to science and engineering courses (Nirmala, 1997). In 1998, the government announced the establishment of a third university, the Singapore Management University (SMU), that would take in students beginning in the year 2000. The university would be privately run, unlike the existing two universities. It would rely not only on A-level examination results, but also on the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) I test results to attract "intelligent and creative" students (Nirmala, 1998). Early that same year, the Deputy Prime Minister, Tony Tan, announced the formation of a committee to review the university admission system (Tan, 1998a). Tan said he had set up the committee as a direct result of concern over the relevance of Singapore's universities to global economic needs that had been expressed by a government-commissioned International Academic Advisory Panel the

Reforming the University Admission System in Singapore: Lessons for Hong Kong 69

previous year. Tan recommended that the committee study university admission practices in other countries to draw lessons for Singapore, while bearing in mind three fundamental principles: (a) the maintenance of high academic standards and rigorous selection criteria to reward hard work and academic performance; (b) the maintenance of reasonable competence in English and the "ethnic language" of students; and (c) the gradual implementation of the new university admission system to allow teachers and students adequate time to adapt to the new requirements. He also stressed the need for a system that was both fair and transparent (Tan, 1998b).

Changes in University Admission Criteria: The 1999 Report The 12-member committee was chaired by the then Deputy Vice-Chancellor of the NUS and consisted of representatives from the two existing universities and the SMU, the Ministry of Education, the Trade and Industry Ministry, junior colleges and the private sector. The committee visited universities, government bodies, testing agencies, and high schools in Japan, Sweden, Israel, the United Kingdom, and the United States to study admission practices. In addition, it met selected groups of principals, teachers, parents, students, university staff, and employers. Its draft report was made public in January 1999 and discussed in Parliament in March 1999 before finally being published in July that year (Shih, 1999). The report was premised on the assumption that university education had to equip students with the skills deemed essential to national economic survival in a knowledge economy. The specific skills mentioned were "curiosity, creativity, enterprise, leadership, teamwork and perseverance" (p. 4). Next, the university admission system had to be viewed as a means of sending clear signals to students about the desirability of these personal attributes. Thirdly, the admission criteria had to be consonant with the major reform initiatives, such as Thinking Schools, currently being undertaken in primary schools, secondary schools and junior colleges. The committee claimed that although the GCE A-level examination was a meritocratic admission criterion, a broader definition of the term "merit" was required in view of the needs of a knowledge economy. Also, using more than one criterion might reduce the stress involved in taking a single highstakes examination. The report proposed having separate admission criteria for each of the following four categories: (a) A-level graduates, constituting a r o u n d 75 percent of the annual undergraduate intake into the two universities; (b) polytechnic graduates (making up about 10 percent of undergraduate enrolment); (c) mature applicants (those aged 25 years or above, and with at least four years of working e x p e r i e n c e , who constitute 1.5 percent of the full-time undergraduate enrolment each

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Jason Tan

year); and (d) international students (who will eventually constitute 20 percent of undergraduate enrolment, in accordance with the government's plans to attract talented foreigners to study in Singapore).

A-level graduates The committee thought that this group would continue to make up the bulk of undergraduates in the foreseeable future. Consequently, most of the discussion in the r e p o r t centred on this group of applicants. A key recommendation was that the A-level examination should be supplemented by the SAT I reasoning test, project work, and participation in co-curricular activities (see Table 6.3 for full details of the weighting awarded to the various admission criteria). The SAT I test was one of the most well-established and internationally recognized reasoning tests and would assess analytical thinking skills. The committee claimed that no formal preparation was needed and that coaching and repeated test practice would not add much to a student's score. Students would be allowed to offer the best SAT I score in the five years preceding their application for admission to university. The committee sent mixed signals regarding the possibility of cultural bias. While recognizing that some local students might be unfamiliar with certain vocabulary items in the test, the report claimed that "students who read widely throughout their education should not have difficulties with the verbal section" (pp. 34-35). Nevertheless, it was recommended that three to five years after the addition of the SAT I test as an admission requirement in 2003, the Education Ministry begin studying the feasibility of developing an indigenous version of the test. Project work was praised as fostering curiosity, creativity, resourcefulness, teamwork, and interpersonal skills. However, since more time was needed for the Education Ministry to attend to issues of fairness (that is, whether students completed the project work unassisted and without engaging in plagiarism) and comparability across schools, project work would only be phased in from 2004. Also praised was participation in co-curricular activities, which provided a measure of such qualities as "leadership, teamwork, passion and compassion" (p. 36). Participation in these activities would, from 2003 onwards, constitute up to a maximum of 5 percent in bonus admission points. In addition to these four criteria, the committee's report recommended that individual university faculties continue to use personal interviews or aptitude tests. Interviews would also be useful in making decisions in cases where applicants fell marginally short of admission in terms of the four main criteria. Flexibility was also suggested in the cases of students who proved outstanding in selected areas such as sports or the arts.

Reforming the University Admission System in Singapore: Lessons for Hong Kong 71

Polytechnic graduates The current admission system evaluates polytechnic graduates largely on the basis of their polytechnic examination results and GCE Ordinary Level examination (a terminal secondary school examination) results. As in the case of GCE A-level graduates, the committee's report suggested evaluating applicants not only on the basis of their examination results, but also their SAT I test scores as well as awarding bonus points for participation in cocurricular activities. The new criteria were implemented for the first time in 2003 (see Table 6.3 for full details). Including project work as an admission criterion was not deemed either necessary or feasible for this category of applicants. The committee chose not to elaborate on the reasons behind this decision beyond briefly alluding to the "different nature and thrust of polytechnic education" (p. 38).

Mature applicants In line with the government's publicly stated desire to encourage continual education among the labour force, the committee recommended three selection criteria for mature applicants from 2003 onwards: (a) SAT I test scores; (b) previous academic qualifications or individual faculties' entrance tests; and (c) personal interviews, employers' references, and quality of work experience (see Table 6.3 for full details).

International students The committee felt that the current system, under which international students competed for admission on the basis of national or school examinations deemed comparable to the GCE A-level examination, should continue. Reasoning test scores were to be left optional rather than made mandatory, as in the case of local students, because the committee felt that not all international students might have easy access to the tests. Likewise, the consideration of project work and participation in co-curricular activities was left to the discretion of the individual universities. No specific weight was assigned to any of these individual admission criteria. The reform proposals were endorsed by a government-commissioned International Academic Advisory Panel that had been established in 1997 to advise local universities on how to attain world-class status. While applauding the move away from sole reliance on A-level examination scores, the panel sounded a cautionary note as well. It warned of the possibility of project work and co-curricular activities being engaged in for reasons far removed from the

72

Jason Tan Table 6.3 Proposed reforms to the Singapore university admission system

Admission criteria

GCE A-level graduates Present1 Proposed

Polytechnic graduates

V

2003 to

v

o m u {2™ Ti