Recruitment

From today's Education Post (at the end of this article):

ESF begins teacher recruitment drive

The English Schools Foundation has begun its major recruitment drive for the year, seeking applications for 80 primary and secondary teaching positions. This year's intake will be the second cohort of teachers to be employed after salaries were cut by 5 per cent last year, following a remuneration review.

Peter Craughwell, the ESF's head of corporate communications, said teachers who were on contracts that predated the remuneration review would move on to the new conditions in September.

Mr Craughwell said 97 staff members had resigned this year, compared with 130 last year.

Last year Julian Harniess (then chair of the Association of Professional Teachers of ESF Schools) expressed the view that significantly more teachers would resign this year than did last year (ESF teachers are on 2 year contracts, so the theory was that they would wait until the contract ended before making a decision). It seems that this has not happened.

Actually, I'm not sure that this figure of 80 vacancies is correct - I heard 129 - but thankfully it seems that there hasn't been a huge exodus of teachers. I know that this is still a sensitive subject, so I won't make any comment except to say that, as a parent, I hope that the ESF can retain good teachers and attract high-quality candidates to replace those who are leaving.

Mr Craughwell said 1,089 applications were received this week but he expected the foundation would receive more over the weekend.

The ESF will hold interviews in Hong Kong early next month, followed by interviews in Australia and the UK.

The ESF has also advertised the position of director of education. The position, formerly known as education development director, is currently held by Graham Ranger. The advertisement says the director of education will be instrumental in shaping the foundation's educational policy.

As I understand it, Graham Ranger recently resigned from the ESF to take up a position as a principal of a school outside Hong Kong.

Also in today's Education Post

Foxcroft new head of West Island
Jane Foxcroft has been appointed the new head of West Island School, ending a selection process that has taken more than a year and involved two candidates rejecting the position.

Lamma parents start petition over zoning changes
Parents living on Lamma Island are upset that their children will have to attend a different English Schools Foundation school than previously planned due to zoning changes.

Re-zoning

One of the problems facing the ESF is that changing demographics are affecting the number of applications received by different schools. The biggest problems (as previously mentioned) are in Kowloon and the New Territories, where the population is expanding, but it also affects other areas where applications are falling.

Towards the end of last year, the ESF announced changes to the zoning. The most radical part of this is that the harbour is no longer a barrier, and so children from the West Kowloon reclamation area will be directed to Island School rather than KGV, and in the Tsing Yi area to Island School rather than Sha Tin College

In addition, primary school children from Lamma and Lantau (including Discovery Bay) will go to Bradbury rather than to Kennedy School. Some areas have been transferred to Clearwater Bay School from Kowloon Junior School and Sha Tin Junior School.

There are some obvious problems with this, particularly during the changeover period:

• Groups of friends/neighbours of similar ages going to different schools.
  
• Although younger siblings will be allowed to go to the same school as their older brother(s) or sister(s) that will mean that they will be separated from their local friends of the same age.

The journeys may be more difficult, which is obviously a concern (particularly with younger children) and it also creates some logistical difficulties with school bus arrangements.

Not quite there yet

I was looking for interesting news on the ESF website. The news section has this:

ESF News - October 2006

Developments in Chinese provision
We have now completed benchmarking of our Year 10 students. Over 70% are second language learners of Chinese and about 15% demonstrate near first language competence as defined by the IB curriculum framework. Read more

We have started writing our new Primary Chinese curriculum. This will be ready for the Primary Chinese Pilot Project which begins in January. We are currently defining the expected outcomes of the curriculum. Read more

Guess what? The links take you to the CLC* where you get a message saying that the downloads either don't exist or you're not allowed to read them. This website needs more work, methinks (it's most likely a problem with the CLC, but someone ought to check that the links work).

The Primary Chinese Pilot Project is actually quite an interesting initiative, so I'd like to write about it, but maybe another time.

* CLC = Connected Learning Community (the ESF's Intranet). Parents will be getting their own logon id's real soon now.

Still on schedule

From this week's Education Post (ESF closing on last hurdle):

The English Schools Foundation is set to overcome one of the last hurdles in changing its governance structure, with its new ordinance due to be gazetted around Christmas.

Chief executive Heather Du Quesnay said the ESF had secured a member to propose the ordinance, which includes substantial changes to the governance of the ESF, as a private member's bill. The identity of the member will be revealed when the bill is gazetted.

This week, at what is expected to be the ESF's last annual general meeting, Ms Du Quesnay said the ESF had received a legal draftsman's certificate that acknowledged the bill complied with legislation.

Ms Du Quesnay said she had met with a number of leading members of Legco, along with ESF chairwoman Felice Lieh Mak and "as far as we know people are favourably disposed" to the proposed changes.

"All of the conversations were very constructive. I think we were able to reassure them that the changes to the ordinance would meet all the concerns of the Public Accounts Committee," she said.

In June, ESF members voted in favour of draft amendments to the ESF ordinance that will replace the 133-member body with a 26-member board of governors.

The revisions provide the framework for wide-reaching reforms of governance and management. They address criticisms from the Director of Audit, the Legislative Council's Public Accounts Committee and Education Minister Arthur Li Kwok-cheung.

They will also set the stage for negotiations over the future of the ESF's public funding.

So it seems that it's still on schedule. Then we just have to hope that the negotiations on the subvention will be as straightforward as expected.

ESF unifies enrolments in line with ICAC advice

Still on the ICAC report, I see that The Standard has a different angle on the story (ESF unifies enrolments in line with ICAC advice):

The English Schools Foundation - known for being the largest provider of English-language education in Hong Kong - has reformed its process for student admissions, unifying enrolment for its 20 schools scattered across the territory.

The reforms in student admissions highlight one of 84 recommendations by the Independent Commission Against Corruption after 2 years of probing into the foundation's system of governance to eliminate possible loopholes for corruption.

According to ESF chief executive Heather Du Quesnay, the foundation, which had previously utilized a three-category system for applicants - students speaking English as first language, as second language and those speaking Cantonese and English - began placing students into two groups in September, which has simplified the process and eliminated all gray areas.

The two groups consist of native speakers who cannot access the local system at all and those who are able to enroll at local schools but would also benefit from English education.

"We have improved the admissions criteria to provide a clearer perspective for parents wishing to enroll their children in ESF schools," Du Quesnay said, adding that in previous years, employees of ESF had been approached by family members requesting help for their children in receiving placements at its schools.

"We wanted to be consistent and completely fair in handling student admissions," she said, insisting that guidelines for a standardized evaluation system will soon be in place to unify the foundation's 20 schools.

Schools in various geographical locations inevitably enforced different criteria for admission due to language diversity. "In the past, the admissions process varied in places such as Kowloon and The Peak," she said, noting that the prevalence of a greater English-speaking population would impose different criteria than those where very few Westerners resided.

ICAC lays down guidelines for the ESF

From today's Education Post, ICAC lays down guidelines for the ESF:

The Independent Commission Against Corruption has made more than 80 recommendations to ensure the English Schools Foundation avoids the type of conflict of interest that sparked uproar three years ago.

Carmel Chow Jun-lung, group head of the corruption prevention department, said the ICAC had not uncovered corruption but had identified many loose practices. These included inadequate guidelines for staff in their day-to-day work, existing guidelines occasionally not being followed and conflict of interest situations. The ESF had accepted all 84 recommendations and already implemented 60 per cent of them, he said. The remainder should be in place by the middle of next year.

Recommendations on conflicts of interest should prevent a member of a staff selection panel seeking the appointment himself half way through the process, Mr Chow said. This happened when former parent-teacher association chairman Mike Haynes applied for the post of chief executive.

"Everyone was aware that was not quite proper," Mr Chan said. He would not comment on how this could happen when John Shanahan, an ICAC chief investigator, was on the selection panel as the ESF's vice-chairman at the time.

For anyone who has forgotten, Mike Haynes was a member of the committee that was set up to find a new ESF Chief Executive. Then he decided to apply for the job himself, and he was chosen by the committee of which he had previously been a member. This was put to a vote of the full Foundation and defeated, following which the ESF chairman (Jal Shroff), vice-chairman (John Shanahan) and treasurer (Simon Glass) all resigned.

Comment: This sad episode is probably a prime example of what used to be wrong with the ESF. As I recall, at one stage it seemed that Mike Haynes's appointment was a "done deal", but a group of parents led by Christine Houston created a big fuss about it and persuaded enough members of the Foundation to vote against it. What I found hard to understand was why the ESF executive didn't realize that appointing someone in that way - especially someone without any relevant experience - could possibly be acceptable.

Thankfully, things have changed a great deal in the last few years.

Subvention safe?

At the start of the month, Education Post reported the positive comments made about the ESF by Fanny Law as she left the EMB, and Heather Du Quesnay (chief executive of the ESF) described this as "something of a vote of confidence". I wasn't totally convinced that this meant very much.

However, it now seems that the current administration is not going to carry through with the threat to abolish the subvention that has been hanging over the ESF for some time.

Obviously we will have to wait for official confirmation of this. Maybe it will come when the new ESF Ordinance becomes law.

School Trips

From today's Education Post (Measures for trips tightened):

The English Schools Foundation has tightened its procedures governing school excursions after the death of a 17-year-old student on a field trip last year.

A coroner's court jury this week delivered a finding of accidental death in the case of King George V School student, Ivan Leung Ching-nam, who collapsed on a hiking trip in Sai Kung on September 21 last year. An autopsy report said the cause of death was heatstroke.

[..]

Under a new ESF policy, teachers leading a school trip are required to have completed first-aid training within the last three years, which was one of the jury's recommendations.

The document requires schools to complete a risk assessment of the activity, covering factors including the nature of the activity, weather conditions, students' medical conditions and physical capabilities. It instructs schools to follow weather warnings and sets different ratios of students to staff, depending on the activity and age of the children.

Under Education and Manpower Bureau guidelines, at least one staff member should have received first-aid training if the activity is exploratory, challenging or physically demanding.

My son is going on his first school camp later this month, and we have been sent a series of forms asking for information about allergies, medical conditions and medication, so I'm sure the ESF is taking this seriously.

Creative Secondary School

I can't find any ESF news this week, so this article from last week's Education Post (A marriage of creativity) about a new school Tseung Kwan O will have to do. The ESF connection is that Cheung Siu-ming was previously the Principal of Phoenix International School and prior to that he was deputy principal of West Island School, and the other point of interest is that the new school will be adopting the IB MYP & Diploma programmes.

Principal Cheung Siu-ming is trying to do something very creative with the new direct subsidy scheme school he is leading.

He is breaking ambitious ground at Creative Secondary School, Tseung Kwan O, by implementing the local curriculum and International Baccalaureate's Middle Years Programme (MYP) alongside each other for the first time.

When it comes to Form Five - or senior secondary two in the new academic structure - students' paths will divide, some taking the IB diploma, some the new Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education.

However, the unusual set-up means that in the first year of the new three-year senior secondary structure, students will be completing the MYP alongside pursuing the first year of the local diploma.

Mr Cheung, who has been working for the English Schools Foundation for much of the past decade, as deputy principal of West Island School and then principal of Phoenix International School before moving to Creative, explained how the marriage would work. The overlap in subjects such as English, Chinese and maths would help.

However, to get their MYP certificate at the end of the first year of the new three-year senior secondary programme being introduced across Hong Kong from 2009, students would need to have studied humanities and science, which are not mandatory in the local diploma that requires them to pursue only two to three elective subjects.