In this paper, I will discuss three educational innovations, which are parts of the recent education reform in Hong Kong. These innovations are: staffs exchange program of the Education Department of Hong Kong, the Leadership Training Program for Principals (LTPP), and Language Assessment Program (LAP) for teachers. The first two innovations focus on professionalising educational leadership in Hong Kong while the last one is on teachers’ language proficiency. This paper is going to argue that these three innovations indicate the intention of the new Hong Kong government to develop new educational leadership in Hong Kong in order to tackle the challenges of New Times. The paper also argues that this type of new educational leadership is no longer emphasising on seniority, years of working experience but on knowledge of educational profession. However, the government has neglected of developing teacher leadership roles in this education reform. Finally, I will conclude this paper by employing Henry Mintzberg’s (1979) framework of organisational structure to analyse the organisational changes in the Education Department and within Hong Kong schools.

According to Stuart Hall (1993), the complex and chaotic contemporary world maybe encapsulated by the phase "New Times". The ultimate implications for New Times, I think, is its uncertainty, the pace and extent of change. Amongst, the economic and technological impacts on people's livelihood are complicated enough to make contemporary world complex and chaotic, not to say considering with the political, cultural impacts, or the debate about subject/object. Knight and Ehrich (1998) have more definite description of the economic impacts of New Times:

When compare education system with the New Times conditions, it is not difficult to note that the concurrent education systems in many countries are restructured to answer the challenges of New Times, as Leithwood et al. (1999) claimed:

To catch up with the relentless changes of economy and technologies, inevitably leads to the change of education system. In this context:

From literature, such as above, concerning the radical changes in contemporary education, we can synthesise the challenges of New Times into two types:

• the challenge of uncertainty in multi-facets
• the challenge of rapid changes in technological and economic and its influence on education

The second challenge derives from the first and directly affects the work of educators. Globally, governments launch various education reforms trying to tackle these two great challenges. Hence, educational restructuring happened. Such radical restructuring introduced by governments are stifling innovations and initiative within different levels in education systems (Weindling, 1998). Subsequently, professional leadership is required not only because of designing, planning, implementing the reform but also modelling to his/her followers how to face these challenges of New Times. In addition, failed reforms cost. It costs economically but it also costs psychologically. When enthusiastic educators commit to a reform and the reform fails, they carry the scars of that experience with them (Scott, 1999). This will then be barrier for further reforms. Developing professional leadership for managing changes and relevant reforms is the very way to minimise the chance of failing the reforms. In the context of Hong Kong, New Times has its additional meaning.

Apparently, the newly established government of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) has deliberately maintained the former administrative system of Hong Kong in order to meet the slogan "Keeping Hong Kong Fifty Years Unchanged". In fact, in some arenas, the government of SAR (also the Chinese government) is afraid of change, such as the formation of the Legislative Council or the juridical system. In terms of education, however, there are two reasons urge the government to introduce radical changes in it. First, the new government is earnestly looking forward to show its capacity of effective governance. The former colonial government was regarded as a lame-duck government or a government of sunset during the post-transitional period. It was inhibited from making any significant decision for public policies if those policies were not blessed by the Chinese government. On the contrary, the new government is now led by a Chinese Chief Executive whom "was elected" from a short-list approved by the Chinese government. This new political leader should show Hong Kong people differences of his new government - a government of sunrise. Thus, the new government builds up its legitimacy and authority by completing tasks which the former colonial government could not attain. Education reform is the best choice for meeting this task. Unlike reforming other public systems, for example taxation, housing or social welfare, education system is relatively less sensible. Moreover, sweeping out colonial ideology from the former education system seems very reasonable for that new government.

Second, the Asian economic crisis unfolded the trouble of Hong Kong economic structure, the so-called bubble economy. Targeting to change this bubble economy, the new government encourages creative technology, creative tourism and creative education. In one word, creativity saves Hong Kong. Unfortunately, the government has instantly encountered the problem of inadequate supply of "creative human resources" to carry out those creative projects. Colonial education system and stark public examinations are blamed as the major reasons of such condition. Therefore, the Hong Kong government planned to have a radical education reform and develop professional educational leadership for carrying out such reform.

Leadership is always equalled to leader per se. "If we know all too much about our leaders, we know far too little about leadership," Burns (1978, p.1) said. The reason for the less understanding of leadership maybe people mix up leaders with leadership, or the contingent nature of the concept of leadership. Particular kind of leadership is required for particular kind of situation. Leithwood, et al. (1999) has well elucidated this:

Accordingly, the implication for leadership, or good leadership is always change. New kind of leadership will supersedes the traditional one when different situation emerges. Likewise, the new educational leadership that the Hong Kong government intends to develop was emerged when radical education reform launched after 1997. The attributive "new" used here has its relative. It is new when it is compared with the traditional leadership in Chinese society in general, and Hong Kong in particular. It is the cultural context amplifies the contingent nature of leadership. As Ronen (1986) pointed out, the phenomenon of leadership itself might be universal, this does not at all imply a similarity in leadership style across cultures. Similarly, Westwood and Chan (1992) claim that the typical categories of leadership style and behaviours that we find in the Western tradition may not be applicable in Southeast Asia. Westwood and Chan would rather use headship to describe the leadership style in Asian organisations. Westwood and Chan continue to compare the differences between leadership and headship:

• Headship is maintained through an organised system and not by fellow group members’ spontaneous recognition of the individual’s contribution to group progress.
• The group goal is chosen by head persons in line with their interests and is not internally determined by the group itself.
• In headship, there is a wide social gap between the group members and the head, who strives to maintain this social distance.
• The leader’s authority is spontaneously accorded by fellow group members and particularly by followers. The authority of the head derives from some extra-group power which he has over the members of the group, who cannot meaningfully be called followers. (p.123)

Westwood and Chan’s identification of headship in Southeast Asia is also applicable to depict the traditional roles of the educational bureaucracies and principals in Hong Kong. The highly centralised organisational structure of Hong Kong education system produced a typical top-down decision-making model working with hierarchical administration both within the ED and schools. No matter which word one selects to describe this kind of headship, for example patrimonialism (Redding and Wong, 1986), paternalism (Bond and Hwang, 1986), or didactic leadership (Silin, 1976), all of them imply that it is the formal position mandates a person authority to lead (manipulate) his/ her subordinates (followers). And this head has the ultimate authority to choose making decision himself or sharing this authority with others. In Hong Kong, principal is the ultimate decision-maker in a school and to whom all other participants in school reported. At system level, principals, traditionally, report to the ED. Under this "one-direction administration", decision-making, information transaction, or communication goes through from one level to another. The members of lower level do not know the operation of the upper. Take teacher's appraisal as an example. Principals should hand in teachers’ appraisal reports to the ED every year. Whether let teachers have a look at their own reports is up to the principal. Westwood and Chan, however, would not be surprised by this kind of administration since they reveal that secrecy is one of the strategies or tactics of Asian headship/leadership. The other strategies include:

• Centralisation
• Non-specific intentions
• Avoidance of formality
• Protection of dominance
• Patronage and nepotism
• non-emotional ties and social distance
• Cliques and political manipulation
• Reputation building

Obviously, these types of headship strategies could not cater for the radical changes in nowadays education system. As an international financial centre, the economic discourses of New Times (for example, the emphasis on competitive edge, the technology oriented economy, or even the TQM management) are challenging such traditional headship in Hong Kong. In New Times, the quality and quantity of changes will not allow any organisation leader to embrace all responsibilities by oneself. Instead, flexible leadership, such as delegation of responsibilities followed by share of authority, is asking to meet the new challenges. For example, the transformational leadership, which could set consensus goals and motivate members of the organisation to achieve them (Leithwoord, et al., 1999). Although some people are still arguing that transformational leadership is only another version of charisma, a type of leadership builds on personal attributes (eg. Gronn, 1995), flexible leadership is still wanted for meeting the great challenges of New Times.

The reform composes of a series of innovations which are initiated to restructuring the Hong Kong education system in order to tackle the two great challenges. Tasks include to modify the whole education system, make it more flexible, more proactive, and more quickly in making decisions. Finally, help to produce ample creative human resources to save Hong Kong from the economic crisis and avoid the emergent of an other one. Whether this reform could implement successfully, to a certain extent, depends on the quality of educational leadership in different levels of Hong Kong education system.

Among the innovations introduced by the Hong Kong government, the following two are directly related to the development of educational leadership:

• The exchange program of Education Department (ED)
• The Leadership Training Program for Principals (LTPP)

The goal of the former is to enhance the professionalism of educational bureaucracies while the later is to prepare school leadership for the universal implementation of School Management Initiative (SMI) in 2000. Another innovation this paper will discuss is

• The Language Assessment Program (LAP) for teachers

This program, on the one hand, shows the emphasis on teachers professionalism. On the other hand, it also reveals the Hong Kong government concerns only with teachers' professional standard of teaching and neglects their roles in administration, or as agents of change. In the deluge of reforms (Southworth, 1998), some administrative teachers also need systemic training to empower them. Now we turn to the contents of those innovations.

This exchange program includes the staffs exchange between the ED and schools, between different departments within the ED and between the ED and some universities. As part of the Education Department reform, this exchange program was designed to fulfil the following goals:

• Enhancing the professional leadership [of the officials of the ED]
• Bestowing more responsibilities to schools and helping them increase value
• Review of overall organisation structure to facilitate client-based service delivery. (Education Department, 1999a)

This program is intended, according to the ED, to enlarge the vision and enhance flexibility in managing changes of educational bureaucracies within the ED. Parallel to this exchange program is the simplification of the organisational structure of the ED. It is supposed that doing so will encourage communication and help officials develop various competences for managing change.

The task of the LTPP is to enhance the professionalism of the principals and contribute to the development of quality education in Hong Kong (Education Commission, 1999). The Working Group of LTPP has divided the LTPP into five arenas:

• The evaluation of self-competences: assessment of the strength and weakness of the participants.
• Leadership development project: learning how to become a leader of the 21st century.
• Unit courses: including knowledge of effective leadership, strategies and projects management, resources management, information technologies for education, marketing and doing action research.
• Experience specific studies: base on the training of this program and self experience, participants are asked to complete a specific project.
• Evaluation: all participants will attend an evaluation (tests) before finishing this program.

The LTPP is offered to all principals and deputy principals. The ED will decide the proportion between these two groups of principals and the proportion between secondary school principals and primary school principals.

This program aims at assessing teachers’ language proficiency including tests of listening, speaking, reading, writing and observation of teaching skills. There are four rankings indicated the proficiency of teachers’ language competence and their language teaching skills. The ED has asked tertiary institutions, which provide teacher training, to include the same teacher’s language assessment standard in their courses. In other words, teachers who are trained by these institutions need not to take the LAP. For those in-service teachers, they have two options. One is to attend a language teacher training program. One is to take the LAP.

The exchange program of the ED, along with other internal reforms of the ED, shows that the government intends to empower this very organisation with professionalism and flexibility in order to envisage the two great challenges. Previously, the ED was occupied by non-professional bureaucracies. During the British colonial era, administrative officers (AOs) occupied the positions of decision-making in the ED as well as other government departments. However, the new government continues to post an AO to a policy bureau of the government secretariat to participate in the formulation of various government policies closely related to the people’s livelihood or to a government department to assist in its management and the delivery of services to the public (Hong Kong Government, 1999). This tradition is now starting to change. Under this exchange program, officials of the ED have the opportunity to experience teaching and have comprehensive understanding of the operations of schools. In addition, internal and external exchange may enlarge the vision of educational bureaucracies on different organisational culture as well as the duties of these organisations. This program helps to pave the way for professionalisation of the ED.

The internal reform of the ED has its multi-layers meaning. First, the ED encounters with difficulties and uncertainty similar to that of schools. If schools have to restructure for tackling these difficulties and uncertainty then why the ED have not to? Second, while the ED intends to enhance the professionalism of principals, why the bureaucracies of the ED do not enhance themselves? Third, if those innovations about organisational change are highly recommended by the ED, why the ED itself does not adapt such innovations in it? As the "engine" of education reform, the ED should not hesitate to give positive answers to these questions, especially under the leading of the new government which is eager to show its effective governance.

The ED has implemented other innovations along with this exchange program to enhance its staffs’ professionalism. Amongst, the new promotion standard is directly related to professional leadership. Promotion in a professional organisation must include the appraisal of professional-knowledge. From a recently released news of the ED, we may note that the trend of promotion of ED’s officials is apt to this direction. Accordingly, promotion of acting positions in the ED or in government school is no longer depending on candidate’s experience or seniority but on their job performance (Singtao Daily, 1999, 9, November). Thus, the emphasis is now much more on the professional performance than on the time that a candidate have worked on this position. Thus, the Hong Kong government is deliberately making the ED as a "good example" of professional organisation. Although the result of such reform remains to see, the intention of the government is clear enough.

As system level participants, officials’ comprehensive understanding of teaching and learning is undoubtedly affecting the implementation of the whole reform. However, the emphasis of professionalism in system level is only the necessary condition but not the sufficient condition for the success of any education reform. The effective leadership at school level is another necessary condition for the success of education reform. Fullan (1993) has already pointed out that the new mission for principals in New Times, is helping to lead a learning organisation in situations of great complexity. Likewise Knight and Ehrich (1998) insist, "principals in the new ‘self-managing’ schools are now, for better or for worse, the fulcrums of change for programs of educational reform (p.2)." As mentioned above, the launch of LTPP is a preparation for the formation of new educational leadership in Hong Kong. The universal implementation of SMI in 2000 is the major catalyst of the new leadership at school level. The basic assumption of the government is that LTPP will empower principals to take up an addition role when SMI is implemented. This additional role, oppose to the traditional instructional leader, is the managerial leader in school.

For many principals, instructional leadership is not a new thing. The traditional hierarchical structure of schools attributes very less difficulties to principals in practising this kind of leadership. However, such hierarchical and highly centralised structure within schools as well as within the whole education system, may be a decisive barrier for implementing SMI in Hong Kong. It is because the traditional structure of schools limited the practice of managerial leadership. One of the major duties of this managerial role is to manage school budget which includes the allocation of government funding. Under the traditional school administration, there are strict instructions for principals how to use government funding, no matter he/she is a principal of public school or government aided school. The extent for principals to re-allocate government funding to other uses is very limited. Any change concerning about government aids should report to the ED and get approval. If a principal, for example, wants to buy any teaching aids then he should have at least two suppliers' quoting. Then ask the ED for approval of which supplier he/she should use. He could only buy such teaching aids after the application being approved by the ED. In the condition of New Times, such highly centralised structure is indisputable out-of-date. It stifled the development and day-to-day administration of schools. Therefore devolution of school administration is necessary. SMI is a feasible way to delegate decision-making to principals. Although Whitty et al. (1998) for example, have pointed out that the administrative devolution in education does not necessarily lead to more autonomous of schools but only increases workloads of principals, in the context of Hong Kong, I think, devolution of school administration is only the first step toward professionalisation of Hong Kong education. School level administrators (principals, deputy principals, AMs, SGMs, and even some teachers) need time to emancipate from the colonial tradition of domination by consent (Gramsci, 1971) and develop confidence of making-decisions themselves. Such phenomenon of domination by consent leads to a strange condition exists in education system which Allan Luke (1999, October) has subtle description. Educators are struggling to grain more autonomous from government on the one hand, depend on bureaucracies for decision-making on the other. Consequently, empowering principals with professional educational leadership is the very step in reforming the education system to deal with the great challenges. First of all, it should enhance the professional standard of school leaders and advance their competences of school administration, followed by developing their autonomous of making-decision. Finally, make school an autonomous organisation.

From internal reform of the ED and the implementation of SMI, it seems that the government is going to re-articulate the relations between the ED and schools. Previously, the ED is the monitor (of schools), the decision-maker, the unique leader [in the education system] while schools (include all participants in school level) are the monitored, user (of educational policies) and the followers. The implementation of series of innovations implies that these relations will change to a partnership mode. When all schools in Hong Kong (except some private schools) practise the SMI in 2000, the role of the ED will be more supportive and advisory instead of making decision for schools. Relatively, school level administrators have to take up more responsibilities of decision-making. Thus, adequate training for new educational leaders is the crucial fulcrum, borrow Knight and Ehrich’s words, of envisage the challenges of New Times.

Unfortunately, the LTPP is overshadowed by articulating it with the question of principals’ staying or quitting their positions. The ED has set the due date, September of 2007, for principals to finish the whole program. If principal who cannot finish and pass the evaluation of the LTPP then there will trigger the question of staying or quitting his/her position. At this stage, the ED does not have any decision for this problem, even though resistance has already emerged within principals (Singtao Daily, 18, June, 1999, and 5, July, 1999). Regardless of the result of this problem, the intention of the Hong Kong government to emphasis on educational professionalism is unambiguous. This intention can also evidence by offering training programs for members of school board. Traditionally, members of school board are some nominal titles. They do not intervene into day-to-day school administration. They do not share the same role as school board in Australia or in UK where principals should response to the them. Although this kind of training program is not compulsory, it reflects the stance of Hong Kong government toward educational leadership and the corresponding organisational structure - professional organisation.

On the contrary, teachers’ role in the process of this education reform in Hong Kong is limited to followers. Definitely, language assessment can justify the professional competence of language teachers, or may increase teachers’ attention on their language standard. However, this assessment only considers one aspect of teachers’ professional competences. In addition to teaching skills, there are other important aspects should be concerned. Amongst, teacher leadership is an important aspect of professionalism which the government should not neglected. The LTPP targets only at formal leaders (principals and deputy principals, or even members of school board) and ignores the fact that informal leaders or potential leaders (administrative teachers or teachers) also need specific training to empower them to play more constructive roles in the reform.

Indeed, both the pace and magnificence of recent education reform have forced many teachers to share administrative work with formal school leaders, especially those AMs in primary schools and SGMs in secondary school. The government, however, does not offer regular and systemic training for them. The hierarchical structure of schools will be continue. Teachers are still followers in the process of the reform. This role, on the one hand, does not cater for the rapid changes in New Times and does not empower teachers to envisage the great challenges. On the other hand this reactive role does not answer to the newly introduced leadership of principals. When SMI is universally implemented, principals should not and could not embrace all administrative responsibilities. It is very possibly for principals sharing these responsibilities with other middle level administrative teachers by setting up different working groups and mandating teachers in charge of these working groups. Thus, teachers will not only accomplish principals’ decisions but also involve in the processes of decision-making or even in making decision themselves. In other words, for teachers, the role as a leader in school administration will become more and more important after implementing the reform. Conclusively, specific leadership training for teachers is necessarily for enhancing teachers’ professionalism and empowers them to deal with the great challenges. Fullan (1993) has unequivocally claimed that "every person is a change agent" and "change is too important to leave to the experts"(p.38). Therefore, only focused on teachers’ teaching role is not sufficient for enhancing their professionalism. Instead, different facets of teachers’ competences should be developed in the processes of the education reform in Hong Kong.

Professionalisation of educational bureaucracy, devolution of school administration, and the coming of further more innovations, indicate the organisational structure in Hong Kong education will face a holistic change. In this section, I will use Mintzberg’s framework of organisation structure to analyse the organisational change in the ED and Hong Kong schools.

Mintzberg (1979) describes structure of an organisation simply as the way in which an organisation divides its labor into tasks and then achieves coordination among them. As Table 1 shown, Mintzberg has divided organisation structure into five categories. The key part of an organisation and its coordinating device decided the category of this organisation. Different key parts and coordinating devices construct different categories of organisations. Although this configuration that Mintzberg described is abstract ideals, Hoy and Miskel (1991) apply this configuration to school structure and yield seven categories of school structure (see Table 2). In doing the analysis, I think, we should not regard these categories are seven separated divisions but should regard them as points set in a continuum. There are different pulls which drive an organisation moving from one end of this continuum to another (see Figure 1). For example, the growth in size and the age of a particular organisation will drive this organisation from a simple structure to simple bureaucracy, or finally to a machine bureaucracy. The evolution of an organisation would continue if other condition of this organisation changed. For example, the increasing complexity of working processes and the expansion of this organisation will drive it from machine bureaucracy to semi-professional bureaucracy. Yet, there are some organisations which exist in between two categories. In this case, we may consider these organisations are in their transitional period.

Figure 1 Mintzberg’s configuration in school structure (source: Hoy and Miskel, 1991, p.129)

Table 2: School Structure and their properties (source: Hoy and Miskel, 1991, p.134)

Considering the new educational leadership in Hong Kong, change of organisational structure is predictable. By employing this framework along with the categories of school structure of Hoy and Miskel, I am going to reveal the possible trend for the organisational change of the ED and schools in Hong Kong.

After implementing the exchange program, and the internal reform, the ED will become professional oriented, at least in staffing and staffs’ development. Recently, the ED has adapted the Enhanced Productivity Program (EPP) for its future development. Under the EPP, the ED will achieve 5% productivity gain within three years, starting from 1999 (Education Department 1999b). In order to achieve this productivity gain it is very likely that the ED will professionalise the standard of working skills of its staffs and then devolve the authority of decision-making to them. This trend helps the operating core of the ED to be the key part of this organisation. According to Mintzberg, this type of organisation, with operating core as the key part and standardisation of skills as the central coordinating device, is called professional bureaucracy. Accordingly, professional bureaucracy is an organisation which has mechanistic or organic structure with low degree of centralisation and formalisation but high in specialisation. The integrating principle is based on professional authority, opposing to the tradition of seniority. This organisation usually tries to attain multiple sets of goals at the same time through its members who have acquired standardised skills and are loosely coupled. The ED will be much near this category after the reform. Low centralisation and formalisation help it response to external change more quickly. That is an important factor for the ED to face the challenges coming from uncertainty of the future. However, the process of professionalisation will run out of its track if it is disturbed by some external control. That is the political influences of the new government.

As mentioned above, the government of SAR is a new government and is desirous to demonstrate its capacity to be an effective government. As a result, it is very likely for the new government to use its authority influencing the ED to make some political decisions (for example, strengthening Chinese identity in the curriculum). As civil servants, the bureaucracies of the ED need to serve some goals of the political leaders. This will then expose professional bureaucracies to the influences of non-professional factors. As a result, according to Mintzberg, this organisation will be pulled toward a semi-professional bureaucracy which is not centralised or formalised as the machine bureaucracy nor is it as loose as the professional bureaucracy. Delegation and shared decision making are not uncommon. The key part of this organisation is its techno-structure and the central coordinating device is standardisation of skills and instruction.

The organisational structure of schools in Hong Kong will change according to the leadership styles of principals. Obviously, the ED expects that the LTPP and the SMI will change the leadership style at school level from headship to leadership. What kind of leadership, then? Transformational leadership, it seems. Both the LTPP and SMI aim at developing educational leaders who have comprehensiveness of perspective, who could fit with uncertain context, and who commit to the reform. Besides, the central focus of transformational leader is the commitments and capacities of organisation members (Leithwood, et al., 1999). To encourage the commitment of members in organisation and enhance their capacities, transformational leaders would use the "hand-off" strategy in order to let members take up more responsibilities. And then learn more. The role of a transformational leader is then doing intellectual stimulation instead of giving instructions. In this case, schools will have a structure similar to the ED, a professional bureaucracy structure. The difference is the operating core of schools is not government officials but teachers. Thus, under the professional bureaucracy structure, school teachers have more commitment to school decision-making as well as day-to-day operation.

However, there are two conditions make the organisational structure of Hong Kong schools remaining unchanged. First, headship is continually practiced. The LTPP, is only a training program. Principals are not compulsory putting what they learn from the LTPP into practice. Unlike Australia, in Hong Kong principal’s salary and school funding are not linked up with performance. Apart from the ED, the only mechanism for monitoring principal’s administration is the school board. However, not all school board in Hong Kong contain parents representative. Therefore, monitoring for principal’s performance is very less.

Second, teachers do not have enough training for managing the additional work of the SMI. Principals are still the core of decision-making. The increasing complexity of school administration after the adaptation of SMI does nothing to change this structure . This keeps schools in simple structure

A simple structure organisation has its strategic apex as its key part and direct supervision as its central coordinating device. In Hong Kong schools, principals and deputy principals compose the strategic apex or the core of the school, most decision-making coming from there. The apex steers different working groups. Teachers of these working groups report directly to the apex and receive instructions from the apex since teachers are supposed as followers within this structure. A simple structure organisation integrates its members through formal authority and professional authority. This kind of structure could only deal with single set of clear, shared goals since the coupling of this organisation is moderately tight. Obviously, principals or deputy principals are still on the top of this structure and construct the centre of power, the centre of decision-making. Of course, varieties do exist within different schools. Different leadership styles lead to different organisational structure.

In the future, we may witness the reform of schools running behind the ED. The structural change of the ED helps it respond to external changes faster than before, helps it quicker in making-decision, helps it more efficient in communication. On the contrary, the standstill of school’s structure increases principals’ workload on the one hand, undermines the pace of reform on the other. This condition will create bottleneck area in the processes of the education reform. First, at the very beginning of the education reform, increasing of workload is inevitable. Since principals and deputy principals are the core leaders in schools, their workloads will proliferate. This condition will be execrable when teachers do not have adequate leadership training. Second, the foreseeable structure of schools is not flexible enough to deal with the deluge of reforms. As a result, some innovations of the reform will only have ‘a shell’ at school level, no subsisting influence on teaching and learning, not to say on students’ performance.

It is definitely important for educational bureaucracies and principals having appropriate and adequate leadership training to enhance their professionalism, and then envisage the challenges of New Times. Teachers, the important participants of any education reform, should also receive ample professional development on leadership if we want to alter the structure of schools to embrace such reform. However, the Hong Kong government has only concerned with the teaching role of teachers in this reform and neglects the importance of teacher leadership role.

Let me finish this paper by telling a story of Wittgenstein. When Wittgenstein taught logic in Cambridge, he had a little problem about preparing his lecture notes. His typist used to spend a lot of time to finish typing one page of his notes due to the large amount of logical symbols in these notes. Complaint was inevitable for this typist needed to work overtime. Wittgenstein solved this little problem by teaching the typist the meaning of those logical symbols and successfully obsessed her with logical inferences. Then, complaint disappeared and this typist was then the professor of logic in Trinity College of Cambridge.

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