ENG-1995 — Page 175

EDUCATION

The Hong Kong Council for Academic Accreditation

The HKCAA is an independent statutory body with 22 members, comprising senior academics from Hong Kong and overseas, and local industrialists and professionals. It is managed by a full-time staff with experience in quality assurance and in higher education, and supported by more than 1 000 local and overseas expert consultants. The HKCAA reviews the non-university, degree-awarding institutions of Hong Kong and their individual programmes, to ensure that the degrees they award meet internationally-recognised standards. During the year, reviews were carried out at Lingnan College, the Open Learning Institute of Hong Kong and the Academy for Performing Arts.

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On teacher education, the council works with the Hong Kong Institute of Education to prepare for a review of the work of the latter, and is represented on the Advisory Committee on Teacher Education and Qualifications (ACTEQ). Seminars and professional development workshops on topics of quality assurance in higher education are also held for participants from tertiary institutions.

The council provided expert advice to the government and others on the standards of local and overseas institutions and the status of their awards, and to professional bodies on accreditation procedures. An academic programmes guide, which contains comprehensive information on courses and programmes offered by overseas organisations in the territory, was published during the year.

The HKCAA works with quality assurance and accreditation bodies around the world. It was a founder member of an international network for quality assurance agencies in higher education, for which it provides administrative and editorial support. It maintains a close relationship with higher education and accreditation authorities in the region, particularly China. During 1995, its members visited China a number of times for discussions and meetings. It is also the co-organiser of a major international conference on quality assurance to be held in Beijing in May 1996.

Advisory Committee on Teacher Education and Qualifications

The committee is a non-statutory body set up in 1993, upon the recommendation of the Education Commission Report No. 5, to provide a single source of authoritative advice on teacher education programmes, and on qualifications acceptable for teaching purposes in Hong Kong. Of its 23 members, 17- including the chairman are appointed from outside the government. They include school heads, teachers, academics, and businessmen. The six ex officio members are the Deputy Secretaries for Education and Manpower and Civil Service, the Director of Education, the Secretary-General/UGC, the Director of the Hong Kong Institute of Education (HKIED) and the Executive Director of the HKCAA.

The committee has advised the government on bids for the Bachelor of Education in Primary Education Course Development Grant, the strategy for supporting teacher development, the planning of non-graduate teacher supply and measures to improve the in-service course of teacher-training programmes provided by the HKIED. To improve the quality of teachers, ACTEQ has recommended to the government to require, by phases, both non-local and local degree holders to have a local post-graduate certificate in education qualification for appointment as graduate teachers in public sector secondary schools. The committee also advised the government on the pace at which graduate posts in primary schools were to be

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