A secondary school in Fanling which accepts many students from disadvantaged families is pioneering the use of humanistic psychology to raise educational standards.
The CCC Kei San Secondary School uses the ideas of American psychologist Carl Rogers, one of the founding fathers of humanistic psychology, in areas such as raising standards, improving behaviour and training teachers.
Rogers developed a person-centred system of psychotherapy, in which the client is meant to direct their own healing process. He became renowned for his concept of 'unconditional positive regard' as the environmental key to successful development of the self in childhood.
Kei San principal Joyce Kwok Yin-mei, a trained counsellor, said: 'I use many techniques from Carl Rogers' client-centred therapy to run my school. I use counselling to handle cases concerning teachers as well as students and we have policies to boost students' self-esteem.'
Ms Kwok said the school had been using the approach for 15 years and had gained high scores in a government measure of the value schools add to students' performance. About 40 per cent of the school's students were from families on Comprehensive Social Security Assistance.
The school's scores had reached the top three tiers of the nine-level value-added tables for the past nine years, she said. The value-added tables, compiled by the Education Bureau, compare students' latest test results with predicted performance based on their scores when they entered the school.