This week’s College Meeting discussed a diverse range of issues, but I was thrilled to be given the opportunity to share with staff and students a little bit about the coming education reforms in Hong Kong, and their possible impact on our College.

In brief, the Hong Kong Government has announced that the present system of education with 7 years of secondary schooling leading to 3 year undergraduate degrees will soon be replaced by a system of 6 years of secondary schooling followed by 4 year undergraduate degrees.  This means that from 2012, secondary schooling in Hong Kong will finish one year earlier than it does at the moment.

This is all highly significant for LPCUWC, as we accept students for entry two years before the finish of secondary school.  Although it will not affect entry for students from overseas or of students in Hong Kong schools that study the GCSE, IGCSE, MYP or foreign national curricula, it will mean that students from Hong Kong schools that study the Hong Kong Certificate of Education (i.e. the vast majority) will enter LPCUWC one year younger than at present, and will be eligible to apply for overseas UWCs one year earlier also.  This raises another issue of finding out whether any of the overseas UWCs intend to impose minimum ages upon students coming from Hong Kong in the future.  It also means that in the year 2010, we are likely to have two cohorts of students competing for the same number of entry places at the College.  Although we have been trying to ease this pressure by accepting some students directly from Form 4 for the past two years, I am not looking forward to the processes we will have to face in 2010 to deal with such a huge number of applicants in the fair and thorough way that we have always insisted upon.

At the College Meeting this week, I shared with the students our thinking that the education reforms are likely to impact us in three main areas.  The first area is student selection.  From 2010, there will be no more Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examinations (HKCEE) at the end of Form 4.  We have always made offers of entry conditional on certain specified performances in the HKCEE.  Therefore, the UWC Hong Kong Selection Committee has decided that it will need to introduce its own entrance examination as a replacement in order to guarantee quality control, and on behalf of the Committee, the College is currently investigating various options for this examination.

The third area concerns student welfare issues and life in the boarding residences.  We do not yet know what the implications might be in this area, but the Heads of Houses are framing a list of questions and issues to be considered under the direction of the Head of Residences, and this list will form the basis of later consultations and discussions.

I was delighted that at the College Meeting many students offered to assist with our planning in preparation of the education reforms.  It will be very important to listen to our students’ perspectives, especially those students who have already entered the College directly from Form 4 during the past couple of years and have been experiencing life here.  We will also need to include other groups in the consultative process, including teachers, the board, parents and overseas UWC Committees.

I have a real sense that the potentially large changes caused by the education reform will be handled with the immense goodwill, co-operation, maturity and spirit of consultation that I have come to know and expect from our students at LPCUWC.

I find it all very exciting!  As I often say, after many years of managing change in schools - “Change brings opportunities, and therefore, we need to welcome it with open arms”.