Empowerment or impediment? School governance in the school-based management era in Hong Kong

Abstract

Following the international trend in education towards democracy and decentralization, the Hong Kong government introduced a school-based management (SBM) system about two decades ago. It is widely recognized in the literature that decentralization, empowering school level management and marginalizing the influence of the intermediate level of governance, can result in better deployment of school resources and better meet the demands of various stakeholders. However, in the unique historical and cultural context of Hong Kong, the advantages of decentralization claimed in the literature have yet to be fully realized. This paper discusses the contextual factors affecting the implementation of SBM in Hong Kong, and examines their impact on four major stakeholders, namely the government, the principals, the teachers, and the parents in the wake of reform.

Keywords::

• school governance
• school based management
• Hong Kong
• school improvement

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The Education Bureau (EDB) is the government department in charge of education; it was called the Education Department (ED) in the colonial and the early post-colonial days and the Education and Manpower Bureau (EMB) from 2003 to 2007.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Research Grants Council, The University Grants Committee, Hong Kong [grant number 445812].