· 11-

The three components of the strategy are:

School development planning;

School management reform on SMI lines; and A new approach to external quality assessments.

School development planning

Dr Cheng explained: "School development planning helps a school to clarify and make known its goals; understand better its current stage of development; evaluate its strengths and weaknesses; formulate improvement plans; and motivate its staff to contribute to quality improvement.

"Some schools already do school development planning in some form," Dr Cheng explained.

"We would now like all schools to begin drawing up a development plan. What is important is not so much the contents or format, but the learning process the school's staff and management go through as they tackle quality issues."

School management reform

"The goals of SMI are generally supported by educators," Dr Cheng said, "but some are reluctant to join SMI for various reasons.

"The report proposes a four-stage approach, rather than the all-or- nothing approach in place at present. We hope this will encourage all schools to proceed down the SMI path."

External quality assessments

The focus of the report is on a new framework for assessing the quality of school education.

"We set out the arguments for a new agency to perform this task," Dr Cheng said.

Share This Page