[Archive] Chapter 1 Introduction

1.1

Details about the schools inspected in the 2000/01 academic year are summarised in Figure 1.

Figure 1 : Number of Schools Inspected

	Primary Schools	Secondary Schools	Special Schools	Kindergartens
Government	3	2	-	-
Aided	27	15	3 ^#	-
Private	-	-	-	20
Sub-total	30*	17	3	20
Grand Total	50			20

Out of the 30 primary schools, 18 are bi-sessional (10 AM session and 8 PM session) and 12 are whole-day schools.

The 3 special schools cover a school for social development, one for the moderately mentally handicapped and one for physically handicapped children.

1.2

The performance of primary and secondary schools was assessed in the four domains of (1) Management & Organisation; (2) Learning & Teaching; (3) Support for Pupils & School Ethos; and (4) Attainment & Achievement. The performance of kindergartens was assessed only in the first three domains.¹

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Charting of children's development cannot be achieved without an on-going process of continuous observation and documentation of various aspects of their development. Given that each QA inspection visit to a kindergarten lasts only 3-4 days, accurate assessment of the fourth domain "Children's Development" is impossible. Kindergartens should take it as their responsibilities to establish appropriate evaluation mechanisms for the assessment of children's development.

1.3

In assessing the quality of education provided by these schools, the QA inspection teams used the published performance indicators that were developed as part of the QA framework. Four levels of performance were used:

Grade 4 -- "excellent" (major strengths)

Grade 3 -- "good" (strengths outweigh weaknesses)

Grade 2 -- "acceptable" (some strengths and some weaknesses)

Grade 1 -- "unsatisfactory" (major weaknesses)

1.4

In 2000/01, primary and secondary schools inspected consisted of a mix of the schools which had volunteered for inspection and those selected by ED from a stratified random sample. Care was exercised to strike a balance in the number of schools by type, by district and by sponsor.

1.5

Starting from the 2000/01 academic year, inspection of kindergartens has been conducted in the mode of Quality Assurance Inspection. The 20 kindergartens inspected in 2000/01 were selected from a stratified random sample. Inspection lasted for three to four days, depending on the size of the kindergarten.

1.6

The findings in this annual report only pertain to the 50 schools and 20 kindergartens inspected and are not meant to be generalised across the kindergartens, primary, secondary and special schools in the territory.

1.7

A statistical summary of the inspection findings and schools' responses is at the Annex.