TNAG-1072-FCO40-1322-Policy-of-the-Government-of-Hong-Kong-on-education-1981 — Page 60

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9.

9.1

9.2

9.3

MEETING WITH THE ACADEMIC BOARD

A meeting with the full Academic Board was arranged, but it proved to be unnecessary to explore major issues, and CNAA members focussed their questions on issues which would tend to show whether the Board had among its members staff who could make a worthwhile contribution to the creation of policy; members were also concerned to establish that the Board had real powers. It was noted that there were never less than four meetings per annum and that seven meetings had been convened in the last 12 months in the light of business created by the re-structured academic programmes; this frequency of meetings was such that the Academic Board had a much greater opportunity to fulfil a high proportion of its terms of reference than CNAA had noted in the case of the Faculty Boards. CNAA encouraged the Board to give more attention to ways of monitoring the quality of the education being offered, e.g. through the monitoring of student performance and a concern for staff development. The Board claimed that the last few years had been transitional, and that this had not been a situation in which course monitoring was particularly meaningful. Reference was made by the Board to reliance on the integrity of individual teachers and that close monitoring had not seemed necessary; nevertheless, CNAA members indicated their disappointment at the limited effectiveness of Faculty Boards, in that they seemed to exercise only a minor part in regard to ensuring the overall quality of the education being offered.

As a particular policy matter, the Board had given consideration to the possiblity of offering external degrees of Hong Kong University or the Chinese University, and there was said to be clear support for this to be more fully investigated through the University and Polytechnic Grants Committee. However, the more immediate concern of the Board was the outcome of the CNAA comparability exercise.

CNAA also enquired specifically about the involvement of the Academic Board in resource decisions and learned that it had not been given terms of reference in that area. The principle that the Board should have such a role was not questioned, but there was at present no possibility of the Board taking decisions which would make extra demands on the budget, and the severe constraints were such that the role of the Board might be permanently eroded; the Board did sometimes debate matters which were effectively about the allocation of what was virtually a fixed budget but the impression was gained that no real decision making in regard to resources took place in the Board. CNAA encouraged the Board to give more attention to a forward policy, even within a fixed budget, which

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