I read with interest, but not surprise, the comments made by the Quality Assurance Inspectorate (QAI) in their report on the 70 schools inspected last year (Education Post, February 22).
Of particular interest were the comments by Professor Hau Kit-tai, who used the term 'low level management', and Professor Cheng Kai-ming, who stated that teaching and learning had 'given way to [ineffective] procedural, administrative or even cosmetic activities'.
Having taught in Hong Kong for the past five of my 20-year teaching career, I have to agree with their observations. My present school, and many of the schools of my NET colleagues, exhibit such low-level management and a plethora of ineffective cosmetic activities.
Many schools are run on the antithesis of healthy professional collaboration. How far removed from enlightened educational principles is the leader who runs a school with a rod of iron, driving teachers to work using an atmosphere of fear and insecurity and a network of cronies to 'motivate' their staff?
In today's economic climate, most teachers are reluctant to say anything when decisions are made and actions taken that go against their better judgment as professionals. Consultation and collaboration are words that are only mentioned prior and during the well-choreographed show that the QAI team views.
And of course the inspectors would find 'that school self-evaluation had much room for improvement'. In many schools it does not exist, particularly at upper management levels. As in many other areas of the Hong Kong bureaucracy, the leader of a school is sacrosanct. Who are principals accountable to? No longer to the Education and Manpower Bureau, which delegated that responsibility, as well as many others, away in the name of education reform.