'We are moving away from the industrial setting where people were ranked as part of an industrial machine. School functions have changed,' he said. Teachers had to be 'discretionary facilitators of learning', which now extended well beyond the classroom.

He was responding to a lecture by Geoff Whitty, director of London University's Institute of Education, at City University last Saturday.

He welcomed Professor Whitty's ideas for a new form of 'democratic professionalism', with teachers of the future working closely with all stakeholders, including government, other professionals, parents, the business community and students, in shaping education.

'Professor Whitty has provided a breakthrough, a new platform for teacher professionalism,' he said.

Professor Cheng questioned whether teachers were true reformers and asked whether reforms would be implemented by 'existing teachers renewed or a new generation of teachers'.

'Teachers and civil servants are the only two professionals who are doing what they were doing yesterday,' he said. 'Teachers are facing a real crisis in professionalism.'

Professor Whitty talked about developments in teaching in the UK over the past three decades. But he noted they reflected global trends that were relevant to Hong Kong with similar policy backdrops of devolution of school management and competition between schools, combined with increasing prescription and performance demands from government.

Teachers, he said, had to be more flexible. The defence of their traditional professional autonomy was often a 'defence of self-interest and restrictive practice'. The democracy he referred to did not equate with the majority voting of western politics but participation of the various stakeholders, he said.

'If the key question is how can teachers maximise children's opportunities to learn, that can only be achieved by working ever more closely with other professional groups,' said Professor Whitty, who also shared his ideas with Secretary of State for Education Arthur Li Kwok-cheung during his visit.

Professor Whitty called for greater trust between governments and teachers: 'If we have trust and engagement we get away from the notion of top-down control. That is what we have lost in reforms that are imposed by governments, that they are all about control.'

Heather Du Quesnay, chief executive of the English Schools Foundation, challenged his model.

'The pressure on teachers in Britain and in Hong Kong to link up with other services does create a pressured environment where student learning could become a lower priority,' she said.

Cheung Kwok-wah, assistant professor of education at the University of Hong Kong, who organised the seminar, said afterwards that Professor Whitty's model responded to a wider agenda for children's welfare in the UK.

'We have not yet arrived at that position, but it is true we are involving more people in schools.

'School work is becoming more complicated. If only teachers are to be involved that is not enough.'

Democracy had to involve government. 'But trust between government and the education sector is weak, which makes it very difficult,' he said.