Hong Kong education

Some months ago, I was very into the education of Hong Kong and read a few scholarly articles published before 1997 in the 1980s and a few years after 1997.

Paul Morris's "The effect on the school curriculum of Hong Kong's return to Chinese sovereignty in 1997," Journal of Curriculum Studies, Vol. 20, No. 6, 1988, pp. 509-20. "the junior secondary syllabus for integrated science was based on the Scottish Integrated Science Scheme. The social studies curriculum...was influenced by a Canadian project." (p. 511-2) I knew I realized this!

"In the case of history, the proportion of the syllabus devoted to the study of Chinese increased marginally from 1972 to 1984. In 1972, of the twelve topics in section A, eight were concerned with the history of China prior to 1949. In 1976 the ratio was seven out of ten and in 1984 and 1987 it was also seven out of ten topics. The focus remained on the period before 1949. The 1988 syllabus has been drastically revised to focus on 14 topics in total, with no discrimination between geographic sections or time periods and with the extension of the time period to allow the study of topics up to 1970. The topics chosen focus on the political history of the establishment of statehood and political independence by the USA, the UK, France, the USSR and China. The new syllabus provides pupils with a more politicized historical framework than was previously the case, and one more relevant to Hong Kong's future." (p. 514)

"In the case of Economic and Public Affairs (EPA)...the only change evident in 1976 were the removal of the term 'colony' and the specific inclusion of a topic concerned with the links between Britain and China." (p. 515)

Discussing the control of school textbooks, the Education Department suggested that "EPA and history textbooks submitted in 1986 should avoid reference to Hong Kong as a British colony...a history text and school atlas should not show Tibet and Mongolia as separate countries prior to 1949." (p. 517)

Paul Morris and Ian Scott's "Educational reform and policy implementation in Hong Kong,"Journal of Education Policy, Vol. 18, No. 1, 2003, pp. 71-84. And:
F. Kan and E. Vicker's "One Hong Kong, two histories: 'history' and 'Chinese history' in the Hong Kong school curriculum," Comparative Education, Vol. 38, No. 1, 2002, pp. 13-89.