Centre for University Partnership

Twenty first May took us to meet with reps from the centre for university partnership. The organisation foster relationships between schools and the faculty. In 1998 they started the accelerated school programme model based on a US model. They promote professional support in the form of partnership to the school community. Schools can apply for support for new innovative programmes from what they call the Quality Initiative. CUSP also works with schools who have been nominated via the Education bureau.

They have more than 800 partner schools so they work with about 80% of the schools. Lots of projects are in action

They also do centralised workshops with principals, work out planning, make good practice visits to China.

At the meeting were some school development officers. Their role with schools is to act as critical friends, assist with co-learning, sometimes do training, maybe facilitate some learning and at times counsel. They visit schools, do workshops with the schools, assist with collegiate lesson planning, class observations etc which are linked to a project being carried out by the school. They develop cross school workshops to assist in building learning communities.

The centre is also involved in assisting and guiding the current curriculum review work conducting collegiate visits, discussions etc

Each year different development officers have been going  in to schools to help develop the curriculum framework especially for English. In the past English was a seperate subject they are now trying to make it more meaningful so students understand how to use it in real life, and at the same time it needs to fall within the new secondary curriculum. Its a multi sensory approach to teaching and learning they are advocating.

An officer talked about her work. Last year kindergartens started to be reviewed by the government. Enquiry based skills are one of the elements of the new curriculum

A principal also talked about development work. Staff had originally been worried about the workload for new developments. Their starting point was self evaluation. They use their expertise to share and assist other nurseries preapre for external reviews.

A voucher scheme was recently introduced for kindergarten. If a kindergarten joins the voucher scheme they have to be involved in QA and quality review by the government. When they are reviewed the review findings are published on the web.

In 1998 a Quality Achievement fund was set up by the government at handover. Funding for CUSP comes mainly from the government. Hong Kong they said aspires to the work done in Early Years in Scotland particularly in relation to inclusion and transition. They hope to continue developing sustainable development work, a recognition scheme is now in place for schools in this area, they also hope to involve parents increasingly with establishsments in partnership.

They felt their society was a pragmatic one – high pressure and a busy society.