Since the handover to China in 1997, Hong Kong has revised its school curricula (with a knock-on effect on universities as well).

I was present during the process from 2007 onwards. From 2013 to 2015, I was working in a university and was therefore in a good position to follow the progress of students from secondary to tertiary education.

In the Prezi below, I report reactions of school principals to the processes of introducing the New Senior Secondary (NSS) curriculum, the perceived challenges and successes.

http://prezi.com/xyul9fqz4yjz/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy&rc=ex0share

To clarify the last part of the presentation, which refers to the connectivity between secondary and tertiary education, I have observed that Hong Kong universities do not really value students’ portfolios of other learning experiences, they are much more concerned about academic results. Secondly, the learning objectives of first-year foundation programmes at universities in terms of the development of transferable skills, such as critical thinking, too closely resemble those of the core NSS subject Liberal Studies. Also, IELTS seems to be supplanting NSS English because the latter is not yet firmly established.