TNAG-1073-FCO40-1323-Policy-of-the-Government-of-Hong-Kong-on-education-including-1981 — Page 289

28

M

education within the school system.

The key tasks of ERE and the

general direction of its work are determined by a policy committee,

chaired by the Director of Education, and an advisory committee.

4.35

ERE is concerned with the effect of educational change on

the standards achieved by pupils, especially in the basic areas of

language and mathematics. As explained in chapter 7 it will be undertaking

research in connection with the current review of policy concerning

language in education at the secondary level, and will also evaluate

the effect of the 1980 Green Paper proposals at the primary and pre-

primary levels.

4.36

In recent years members of ERE have conducted research in a

variety of areas, including the concurrent and predictive validity of

schools' internal assessments; the use of scaling tests as a means of

selection; school reactions to the Secondary School Places Allocation

system; standards of attainment in basic school subjects; Chinese

vocabulary and the use of Mandarin as the medium of instruction; dropouts

and problem children; and environmental problems in schools.

4.37

ERE research activities are co-ordinated wherever appropriate

both with the routine planning processes of the Education Department

and with the formulation of new policy. For example, when the Junior

Secondary Education Assessment (JSEA) scheme was conceived it was

realised that research would have to be carried out to determine the

most appropriate method of scaling internal assessment as well as the

level of accuracy of internal assessments, bearing in mind the lack of

experience in Hong Kong of this type of scheme. It was decided to await

the research findings before making a final decision on whether or not

the pupil's personal performance in the scaling test should also be

counted in the selection procedures.

Part of the research was accordingly

directed towards a comparison of selection procedures based on scaling

test results combined with scaled internal assessments.

The findings

indicated very little difference between the two methods of selection

!