Durante las prácticas

Education in Hong Kong was modelled on a British-style system and influenced by Chinese tradition during its colonial history. The post-handover period has seen a number of whole-system changes such as the introduction of a sole public examination and the New Academic Structure. Through decades of efforts, Hong Kong has achieved 12-year free education; developed a sophisticated partnership with various non-governmental SSBs; and shifted from relying on private funding and resources to receiving public subsidies. Subsequent to the expansion of mass education, since the early 1980s, policy-makers started to stress quality assurance, effective school governance, parental choice, market forces and competition through a series of school-based management initiatives including the SMI/SBM schemes, SBCD programmes and the DSS. In this context, school autonomy in Hong Kong has been characterised by four features, elaborated below.

Firstly, major reforms promoting school autonomy have been centrally designed and initiated, but implemented voluntarily at first and made compulsory after 1997. A good example is the introduction of the SMI and SBM scheme. As described above, the former was firstly promoted through lobbying strategies but not warmly welcomed by most aided schools, whereas the revised SBM scheme was mandatory for all aided schools since 1997. This change has been in

accordance with the shifting of governance and policy-making in the political system before and after the handover (Morris & Scott, 2003). The establishment of IMCs, the promotion of Chinese as Medium of Instruction and the regulation of class sizes are examples of the centrally initiated and implemented policies in the post-1997 period. The SAR Government, compared with its colonial predecessor, seems to have relied less on the use of symbolic policies and increasingly tightened its control over policy implementation at the school level (Morris & Adamson, 2010).

rather than from the Government, to individual schools. By including 40% external representatives, the power previously exclusively enjoyed by SSBs has been divided among various stakeholders. The roles and functions of SSBs and

SMCs/IMCs, and the relationship between them, have been clearly redefined, while the central control of the Government has not been significantly changed. In other words, the Government still holds the power of determining goals and criteria of education through the prescribed curriculum and the public examination, and designing the governance and accountability framework. Furthermore, as Pang (2008) argues, the Government “is likely to assume increasing control of school education”, because: the Board of Education was dissolved in 2003; the Education Commission no longer prepares policy documents from 1997; and the role of SSBs as “intermediate control structure” has been weakened since the 2000s (p. 30). In this sense, central control of education seems to have been reinforced.

Thirdly, the autonomy that has been devolved to schools is limited and further balanced by a set of central control mechanisms. For example, aided schools have only been empowered by the SBM scheme to manage 15% of their budget; and they are free to admit up to 30% pupils based on their own discretion. Although the DSS enables schools to be more autonomous than their aided counterparts in many aspects, schools with DSS status are still subject to government inspection and the contract can be terminated by the EDB if they cannot meet the stipulated standards. Besides, there are only a small proportion of secondary schools (13.5%) granted DSS status, which has limited their impact. Despite that the Government has developed a school-based evaluation framework, it has to be validated by the EDB review and conducted according to prescriptive performance indicators. Even in some areas that schools are in theory granted great autonomy (e.g. teaching methods and SBCD), in reality, they adopt approaches which guarantee high performance in the sole public examination.

Fourthly, the DSS has been promoted as a key means to achieve marketisation/ privatisation of education (Chan & Tan, 2008), which has correspondingly brought about the increase of the level of school autonomy. It was formulated and initiated in an attempt to expand the private provision of education and strengthen the role of

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private schools as a good alternative to public schools (Tse, 2005). Moreover, market mechanisms are central to the management of DSS schools. For example, they are allowed to determine tuition fees according to market price signals, and parents and pupils can ‘buy’ education service based on their needs and preferences without central restrictions. Thus, a few elite DSS schools are able to set higher bars to select rich and/or academically capable pupils. Nevertheless, Law (2007) argues that the extent of marketisation/privatisation should not be exaggerated; “the DSS school is not a genuine case of privatisation; rather, it subsidises private education” (p. 109).

5.6. Conclusion

The Hong Kong education system has mainly reflected and changed in response to broader socio-political shifts. In terms of school autonomy, three distinct periods have been identified in this thesis. The strategies adopted by the government in the education sector have shifted from ‘laissez-faire’ to centralised control and then to decentralisation and diversification. However, the reforms promoting school-based management since the 1980s have not necessarily led to higher levels of school autonomy in all types of schools and in all management areas. Furthermore, the Government has recentralised the education system through weakening advisory bodies and SSBs; the accountability framework and quality assurance mechanisms have also been used to retain central control. Meanwhile, the central curriculum and the sole public examination have determined daily teaching and learning to a large extent, although SBCD has been rhetorically encouraged. The DSS, as a specific approach to marketisation/privatisation, has only brought about more autonomy in a small number of schools. Therefore, it would be

problematic to make the general claim that secondary schools in Hong Kong enjoy high levels of autonomy.