SCMP article on The Way Forward

Today's SCMP has more on "The Way Forward" and the meetings organized by the ESF to talk about this strategy. In an article entitled ESF gets down to business as it sets out plan for the future, Katherine Forestier writes about the document and the first meeting:

In a draft "business plan" released to staff and parents earlier this month, foundation chief executive Heather Du Quesnay put forward the leadership's ideas for the future. These embrace everything from the ESF's place in Hong Kong and its values, to its curriculum, special needs and Putonghua provision, the need for students to have a greater voice and to make professional development for its teachers a priority.

"Excellence in learning, through team-work and commitment to students," are the lofty words it spells out for its aim.

It also details opportunities to be had from running a new profit-making company, opening more kindergartens and, in the long term, expanding beyond Hong Kong.

So far this document has not stirred the emotions released a year ago when Ms Du Quesnay launched the consultation for a 10 per cent cut in teachers' pay and benefits. Only a handful of parents and teachers turned up to the first open meeting to discuss "The Way Forward" with the ESF's big guns from Stubbs Road headquarters, held at King George V School earlier this month.

Parent Dennis Ng Chi-chum reflected some unease about the business tone, including guidelines for fees placing the ESF up to the "mid-point" across international schools and plans for the profit-making company. He also touched on the big question mark hanging over the ESF - whether it would retain its subvention which now accounts for about a quarter of its income.

The future, he suggested, could not be planned until the battle for the subvention had been fought and won. "If you have the subvention the government can impose some kind of obligation," he said. "Without it the ESF can do what it likes."

Ms Du Quesnay defended the more business-like direction and the need to make plans now. In the document she states that the ESF would argue for retaining the subvention but should plan to ensure it can survive if it is withdrawn. "Organisations need to develop. Either they are aspiring and moving forward or they stagnate and decline."

I wonder which managment book that comes from. Ill-considered expansion can be just as bad for an organization as stagnation.

The document suggests the new company could in future extend its business overseas. But Mr Ng urged Ms Du Quesnay to concentrate on the needs of students in Hong Kong which were not yet being met.

The blueprint envisages the ESF curriculum being both more international - with moves to International Baccalaureate programmes - and more local, with greater emphasis on the Chinese language.

But the complex issues surrounding how and which form of Chinese should be taught are controversial. Mr Ng and his British wife Sarah Rigby are wondering how their Eurasian children - and the many more like them in ESF schools - will fare, not in the mainland but where they live, but in Hong Kong which demands knowledge of Cantonese and complex Chinese characters.

Wang Xiao-ping, the ESF's Putonghua adviser, called for parents to be open-minded and "not prejudiced" over the Putonghua curriculum which was being enhanced and differentiated for different children's needs.

The issue of teaching Chinese is certainly a complex one for the ESF. The majority of children attending ESF schools have Cantonese as their "mother tongue", and yet this is neither used nor taught in the schools. All the focus is on Putonghua and on learning Simplified Chinese characters.