Adolescent problems in Hong Kong have brought questions about their moral development and mental health to light. Moral education for preschool children will be strategically important to address these issues because applying early educational interventions to preschool children will effectively enhance their personal development. This article…

This paper critically examines parents' and service providers' reception of the Pre-primary Education Voucher Scheme (PEVS), which was designed to enhance the quality of early childhood education in Hong Kong. The PEVS was a universal voucher policy that was designed to harness market forces and increase direct governmental control of quality in a…

This paper will present multiple themes that are intermingled with one another, aiming to bring an overview of sociology of education and its application in the Hong Kong situation. One of the themes concerns how sociology of education has intertwined with the socio-political aspect of Hong Kong before and after year 1997 resulting in different…

The Yew Chung Education Foundation operates a network of five international schools in China, plus one in California, serving in total around 5500 children. This article investigates the aims and philosophy of a "model" of international education which aims not only to educate children but also to bring about an inner transformation of…

This volume contains a collection of selected papers submitted to the 19th Annual International Conference of the Bulgarian Comparative Education Society (BCES) held in June 2021. The 19th BCES Conference theme is "New Challenges to Education: Lessons from around the World." The book includes 40 papers written by 66 authors from 15…

The introduction of a voucher scheme for early childhood education in Hong Kong has resulted in significant changes in the field. This article reports data from a pilot study that aimed at understanding better how parents chose an early childhood education service following the introduction of a voucher scheme in Hong Kong. Eighty-six Chinese…

This paper critically analyses how the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administration Region has tackled the issue of preschool quality over the past 30 years. Although early childhood education is not part of the publicly funded education system, there is almost universal preschool attendance among three to six year olds. The government…

Educational authorities in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) of China introduced an early childhood education voucher system in 2007 with two implicit goals: to turn profit kindergartens into non-profit ones and to curtail parental choice. This initiative has caused a great deal of controversy locally and internationally, so the…

This article discusses the sources, processes and impact of the quality assurance policy implemented in Hong Kong preschools. Regarded as a sort of policy alignment between the subsystems of pre-primary, primary and secondary education, the introduction of a quality assurance policy has been directly and indirectly transforming the settlements in…

The same factors appear to drive early childhood policy in all parts of the world, including the importance accorded to early childhood education, national goals, governments' beliefs about their role in the early care and education of young children, governments' regulations of early childhood services, and the background and characteristics of…