Study title

Transcripts of interviews with UK policy advisors on Hong Kong education policy. Recently England has engaged heavily in external policy referencing to drive its educational reforms. Hong Kong has been a major source of such referencing by virtue of its strong performance on international tests of pupil achievement. Using Hong Kong as a case study; the project will analyse external policy referencing, with England as the ‘borrower’ and Hong Kong the ‘lender’. The aim is to cast a light on the role of external policy referencing in the policy making process, and how policy referencing is operationalised in the England context. The study provides an insight into the contemporary patterns of external policy referencing, and its manifestation in the West and East Asia, and examines the evidence used to inform the process. The study will undertake a literature review and interviews with stakeholders in both contexts to address the following research questions: (1) What have been the critical features of the patterns of external policy referencing in England since the 1990s? (2) How have policy makers in England interpreted the sources of success of Hong Kong’s education system, and how does this compare with the views of key stakeholders in Hong Kong?In 2007 the Principal Investigator returned to London after working for 31 years in Faculties / Institutes of Education in Hong Kong and specialising in East Asian education systems. As political parties in England competed to promote their vision of schooling, he was constantly bemused as to the extent to which their plans for reform were based on the claim that what they were proposing was a feature of one or all of the high performing East Asian societies that do well on international tests of pupil achievement e.g. the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), and Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). The 2010 Schools White Paper in England and the ongoing review of the National...