Reform Disconnections between the Free Quality Kindergarten Education Scheme and Kindergartens in Hong Kong

Abstract

National Association of Education for Young Children (NAEYC) (2009) stated early childhood education (ECE) practitioners are key agents who develop quality assured curriculum and conduct teaching through developmentally-appropriate practice (DAP). They play the vital role in providing quality education for enhancing children's whole-person development in early years, in the sense that, their importance and significance towards children’s development is an undeniable fact. In order to retain and maintain a stable teaching team in kindergartens, whether or not ECE practitioners’ salary could be guaranteed with statutory increment are the key concerns of different stakeholders in ECE, where appropriate, the Government of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) plays a pre-dominant role in policy-making on the subsidy of ECE in Hong Kong. This paper therefore examined the key initiative on the salary adjustment for kindergarten practitioners through the implementation of the Free Quality Kindergarten Education Scheme (Scheme) starting from 2017/18 school year (Education Bureau, 2017b). The latest three policy addresses on the direct subsidy to kindergartens joining the Scheme (Scheme-KGs), announced by the Government of HKSAR in 2016, 2017 and 2018, were extracted for examining the fault-lines in terms of direct subsidies for Scheme-KGs via content analysis. Developed by Walker (2006), the Five Reform Disconnections were adopted as theoretical framework for analyzing the disconnection between the Scheme and teachers' expectation on their salary adjustment. Practical recommendations were provided for alleviating the said disconnection.