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Report proposes a new strategy for quality assurance in education

The following is issued on behalf of the Education Commission:

A better framework is needed to enable professional educators to account for the quality of their services, so that they can respond positively to the public's concerns about education quality.

This is the message in a report, published today (Wednesday) by the Education Commission's Working Group on Educational Standards for three months of public consultation. The report, Quality in School Education, makes 13 recommendations for a new strategy to promote quality.

The report calls for the creation of an independent Quality Assurance Unit; school development planning in all schools; and the wider extension of the School Management Initiative (SMI) to promote effective decision-making in schools.

"Now we have enough places at all levels of education, people are more interested in quality issues," the working group chairman, Dr Cheng Kai- ming, said.

"Educators are coming under increasing pressure to demonstrate to the public and the Government that they are doing a good job, and are making effective use of the huge public resources we provide for education.

"Unless educators develop their own professional accountability arrangements, they will be vulnerable to uninformed criticism from the media and politicians. The main aim of the report is to define a framework in which professional accountability can develop.

"At this stage it is the school sector which requires most attention as far as quality is concerned," Dr Cheng said, "but the working group would like the Education Commission to keep in view the need for similar studies of other sectors -- technical education, teacher education, and tertiary education."

The Chairman of the Education Commission, Professor Rosie Young, noted that this is the second working group report to be published.

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