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Mimi Lau

English Schools Foundation chief executive Heather Du Quesnay is what, in political circles, they call an operator.
She served as director of education in Britain's Lambeth and Hertfordshire councils, overseeing between 100 and 550 schools at any given time, and was chosen by former British prime minister Tony Blair to head up the National College for School Leadership he set up in 2000.
And yet in her  31/2 years  in Hong Kong, neither  former education secretary Arthur Li Kwok-cheung  nor  incumbent Michael Suen Ming-yeung  has sat down to talk  with her face to face.
'You know, I never met Arthur Li. I wrote to him before I came to Hong Kong, a terribly courteous letter trying to get him to a meeting, and he suggested I meet [former permanent secretary for education] Fanny Law Fan Chiu-fun,'  she said.
'I've met Michael Suen socially but I haven't had a sit-down meeting with him.'
Ms Du Quesnay said she hoped all that would change now the ESF was 'under new management'.
'The crucial thing is, once we've got the new board in place, and the Education Bureau accepts the ESF is under new management, that's probably the time. They made a big fuss about it so I think that's critical,' she said in an exclusive interview with Education Post ahead of the ESF's first new-style board meeting on Tuesday.
Having joined the ESF in February 2005 at perhaps its lowest ebb  - reeling from governance scandals and a damning audit of its finances and procedures - Ms Du Quesnay has weathered the storm, overseeing, together with chairwoman Felice Lieh Mak,  a reform of its ordinance resulting in the replacement of its cumbersome foundation of around 130 members with a board of just 26.
However, the most difficult hurdle - a renegotiation of the amount of money the ESF receives from the government - has yet to be crossed. And resolving the subvention issue is something Ms Du Quesnay has made a personal goal to be achieved before her contract is up in 2011.
'I'm still hoping [the subvention debate] will take place at the turn of the calendar year. I certainly want to make a very big contribution to it and I want to get it resolved before I leave Hong Kong. That's a personal target,' she said.
'It needs to be resolved. This question has been hanging over the ESF since long before I came.'
The future of the subvention has been in question since a government review in 1999 recommended it be phased out.
There are also issues surrounding attitudes towards the ESF as it continues its metamorphosis from a colonial organisation to one increasingly catering to the needs of  middle-class Chinese pupils - 43 per cent of its 15,000 students in 20 schools are ethnic Chinese.
Ms Du Quesnay said she sometimes felt there was  'half resentment' towards the ESF over its subvention, but that Hong Kong should be both realistic about its role and proud of its achievements.
'I would be very happy to take more local kids,' she said. 'We are very proud of the fact that we have become a major choice for a lot of middle-class Chinese children.
'The standard and quality of education in terms of exam results and the experiences that kids have in school are second to none.  Hong Kong ought to be proud of that and not be sort of half resentful sometimes, it feels.'
Commentators have suggested a range of alternative funding options for the ESF, from joining the  Direct Subsidy Schools scheme to going totally private, or even have the government launch a voucher system to fund all international schools fairly.
Ms Du Quesnay said she was generally open-minded on  the issue but did not favour the DSS route.
'I haven't got a model to put on the table for the  Education Bureau. I do think our funding level should be closer to aided schools. I don't know whether it's possible for us to have the same level of funding [as local schools],' she said, adding that whatever the model, it 'should be unique funding appropriate to ESF's needs'.
It has been suggested that to retain a high level of funding the ESF may have to put the quality of its Chinese-language teaching on a par with that at local schools, but Ms Du Quesnay said that would be  challenging.
The only sources of income for day-to-day running and operational budgets were fees and the subvention, she said, adding that the ESF  earned a small amount from kindergartens but it was not significant.
Asked if she would consider alternative income sources,  Ms Du Quesnay said that, if necessary, bank loans could be a  way forward to fund the construction of school buildings, although it was not something the ESF had traditionally done.
'We would look at a whole range of possibilities, including borrowing, if the bank was prepared to lend.'
Looking ahead to immediate needs, she said money would have to be found for repair work on ageing school buildings. Kowloon Junior School and Island School needed rebuilding, and King George V School needed major work.
'That's going to come to several hundreds of millions of dollars,' she said, adding that the ESF 'would certainly be looking to the government to fund a portion'.
Ms Du Quesnay  believes that by overhauling the structure of its governance following the 2004 audit report, the way is now clear for a positive debate on the subvention.
'[The government] has been absolutely firm it is not going to talk to us until the new board has been in place, so we know no more than we knew several months ago,' she said.
'But our starting position would be that our funding should be restored on the old parity principle.'
As required by the ESF's revised ordinance, the new 26-member board  has 10  appointed members, eight directly elected parent representatives - including one to represent pupils with special education needs and one  for  the  committee of parents - one principal, two teachers, one support staff and three school council chairmen. Ms Du Quesnay is on the board  but has no voting rights.
She said the new governance arrangement meant there would be a more diverse range of stakeholders providing more expertise and professional skills to offer advice.
Ms Du Quesnay pledged to uphold transparency on the board and said the more frequent meetings would facilitate debate - it has to meet at least six times a year.
'It won't be a bit like the foundation,' she said. 'The trouble with the foundation was, there was this high number of people who only met once a year. Normally they never got the chance to express their views except in that one meeting.
'The foundation's meeting became a place where people expressed their anger and resentment, because they hadn't had any involvement for the rest of the year,' she said.
'I'm a great believer in giving people all the information they can possibly want so they can understand the issues. We won't get to the point when they feel frustrated by the lack of information.'
Some parents have criticised the ESF for a lack of  financial transparency, but Ms Du Quesnay said full accounts for both the ESF and Educational Services Limited, which administers the private independent schools, were in the public domain.
'People can stand up in any meeting and say you don't have an open book policy, but we do.'
In March this year, the ESF announced a surprise  rise in fees of up to 7 per cent for the current school year.
Fees rose to HK$89,250 for its six secondary schools and HK$58,100 for the 10 primary schools. But Ms Du Quesnay insisted that the affordability of ESF education remained a priority.
'We always said we want ESF education to be affordable.  When people want us to consider reducing the size of the classes to make them more like other international schools, where they might have classes of 20 to 25, my answer is always: 'We can't do that'. Our parents couldn't afford to pay for it. It would have huge financial implications.'
Ms Du Quesnay was  keen to stress was that, although the new board was now at its point of inception, change of governance had already taken place. She saw the board as a consolidation of the process of change. Things happened differently these days.
'Then . . . parents felt decisions had been taken without any transparency and the ESF had decided to put some ESF capital into funding the private independent schools without anybody knowing about it,' she said.
'As far as I can tell, some things did happen like that in those days. There was a fair bit of, I'm told, behind-the-chair things done. It was all clean in terms of the books, but people didn't know what was going on and why it was going on.
'But you can't work like that with Felice Lieh Mak, and actually, you can't work like that with me either.'
Figuring it all out
1967
ESF set up on the 'parity principle' of equal public funding per student to government schools.
1979
17.6 per cent 'grossing up factor' introduced for calculation of ESF grant.
1995
Subvention changed from per capita basis to per class, adjusted for the difference in class sizes. Grossing up factor removed.
1999
Government review urged phased withdrawal of subvention.
2000
Subvention frozen at 1999 level of  $300 million for three years
April 2003 to March 2005
Subvention cut by a cumulative 6.44 per cent
2004
Damning audit report on ESF governance, administration, and funding.
2004
Government subsidy removed for all classes set up after 2002.
2005-6
Subvention of $278 million accounted for 28 per cent of ESF income.
2005
Government puts talks about subvention on hold until new ESF governing board is set up.
2006-7
Subvention of $269.3 million accounted for 24.4 per cent of ESF income.
2007-8
Subvention of $267.7 million accounted for 21.7 per cent of ESF income.
October 2008
First meeting of new governing board.



Under new management