‘Globalization’ is a favorite phrase of journalists and politicians. When people talk about globalization, most of them just focus on labor and the loss of manufacturing jobs overseas, like starbucks or McDonald’s. But, education changes are also taking place around the world in response to the trend of globalization. Hong Kong also has no exception.
The world is undergoing fundamental economic, technological, social and cultural changes. Today we are often told that education must be made more efficient by being forced into the market model. The industrial economy is replacing by the knowledge-base economy. Hong Kong is reforming the education system with a global looking with skills and techniques to survival in the global world.
As this reason, the Hong Kong government was changing of the academic structure, can be said as a response to the global educational pattern, as six years in secondary school and four ears in university is a pattern in most country in the world.
The reforms envisage the replacement of four years of senior secondary education (two years for the Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination, two years for the Hong Kong Advanced Level Examination) with a three years structure leading to a new examination. Most students would complete senior education. The reform also extending the usual length of first degree programs to four years.
The globalization place a much higher premium on integration of theoretical applied learning. Emerging young adults have some experience; have some exposure to the world of work while at school. Student are studying the new curriculum can be as ways to create the kind of workforces that the new global economy requires. Student can have a greater emphasis on applied learning and opportunities for students to find a career under the reformation of education.
The new education system is shorter(only six years in secondary school), oriented towards the information of new kind of workers who should be more adaptable, creative, flexible and skillful that is needed by the global economy. It means that the consumer drive the education reformation in Hong Kong.
In summary, Hong Kong is reforming the education system with a global looking with skills and techniques to survival in the global world, as there are changes at the economic, political, and cultural levels of society that tend to promote and reinforce a more global perspective on social policy for the increasingly globalize economy.
