The evidence continues to show, in the latest survey and focus group data, that there exists continuing anxiety and tension around ESR. This rests, to some extent at least, on misunderstanding, miscommunication and disinformation about what ESR is for and how it relates to SSE. There have been calls for a suspension of ESR or a longer time span between ESR visits to schools. Despite clear guidelines from EDB, some schools, which have not undergone ESR, attend too much to rumours and persist in over-investment in preparation for ESR.

As the data make clear the central problem lies in the anxiety generated from the anticipation of forthcoming review rather than in the ESR process or aftermath. The messages from all the schools for which the questionnaire data collected between 2003 and 2006 show a consistent pattern of response. Three out of four staff agreed ("strongly agree" and "agree") that ESR had helped their school devise future goals and development plans, while there is a fairly consistent agreement, around 65%, that ESR had given an informed judgement on the effectiveness of the school's own self-evaluation process.

(Impact Study Executive Summary, p.6)

A world wide movement

Hong Kong is both learning from what is happening in other parts of the world as well as providing a model for others to learn from. The "sequential" model of SSE/ESR adopted by EDB is now widely seen as the most appropriate form of school development and accountability. It is a form that has been adopted in Asia Pacific countries such as Japan and Singapore, in Australia and New Zealand and in many European countries. In all of these countries schools are increasingly expected to be self managing and self improving, with self-evaluation therefore playing a key role in school improvement. Hand in hand with this, inspection and quality assurance systems take as their focus a school's own effectiveness in evaluating itself and telling its story to a wider audience.

In practice there are tensions between the improvement agenda and demands for external accountability, and no country can claim to have got the balance right. Research has repeatedly shown the dangers of too rigid or "high stakes" accountability frameworks which undermine the school's own "home grown" forms of reflection and inquiry. The imposition of a prescribed framework has been widely shown to be counter productive, encouraging schools to adopt a form of self inspection rather than a more developmental "bottom up" approach. In England, for example, a self-evaluation Form (or SEF) is now used by all schools as a protocol for reporting to inspectors, resulting in a standardised and formulaic approach being adopted by senior leaders. While the Chief Inspector has encouraged schools to adopt their own forms of self-evaluation, headteachers have tended to "play safe" and simply follow what they see as the prescribed formula.

The message for Hong Kong is to avoid overprescription, to learn from mistakes made in other countries as well as carefully evaluating where their strengths may lie. The move in England to "lighter touch" external review and proportional inspection according to a school's facility with self-evaluation, should also be carefully reviewed before being adopted in Hong Kong.

Impact Study Executive Summary