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The Hong Kong Education System
Chapter 7
The Establishment and Maintenance of Standards in the School System
Before the introduction of nine years' free, compulsory and
universal education the foremost planning target in education was the
provision of sufficient school places for an ever-growing population.
Pressures on time and space, together with competing claims by other
community services on the financial resources available, led to the'
introduction of measures such as bisessionalism and reduced staffing
ratios in schools which presented new challenges for those concerned
with educational standards in particular, for the teachers directly
affected. There was a general awareness in the community of the need
to protect educational standards in a period of rapid expansion, to which
the government fully subscribed by taking specific measures to effect
qualitative improvements wherever possible. A recurrent theme in the
public criticism of the earlier green and white papers, however, was the
subordination of quality to quantity in government educational planning.
But then, as now, the best schools were able to overcome physical constraints
and achieve effective results; and, legally, the Education Ordinance and
Regulations safeguarded minimum standards - for example, by requiring
schools to be provided with adequate apparatus, equipment and general
facilities, by limiting the operations of permitted teachers and by
providing the Director with controls over school syllabuses and textbooks.
Nevertheless, a strong competitive spirit began to develop among parents
and pupils as they sought to achieve the best advantages that education
could offer, and this spirit still prevails.
7.2
Pressures on children have undoubtedly been progressively
reduced, with the extension of universal education to nine years and with
increasing opportunities for post-compulsory education, both general and