Competing Forces: Government Policy, Teacher Education, and School Administration in Hong Kong Early Childhood Education

International Journal of Child Care and Education Policy

Table 2. A brief review of early childhood education development in Hong Kong (1980s)

	Kindergarten	Child Care Centre
1980s	Policy
	Green Paper on Primary Education and Pre-primary Services (1980) — First official consultation in the field.
	White Paper on Primary Education and Pre-primary Services (1981) — First official document outlined the need to accelerate training and recommended at least 1 trained teacher (QKT or QAKT) per kindergarten by 1984.
	Training	Training
	Education Department transferred training provision to Grantham College of Education in 1981 to offer a new 2-year Part-time In-service program with Qualified Kindergarten Teacher (QKT) registration.	In addition to Hong Kong Polytechnics, Lee Wai Lee Technical Institute (later renamed as Hong Kong Institute of Vocational Education — Lee Wai Lee campus) provided 2 year full-time pre-service training in 1980.
	Training Workshops
	Kindergarten Advisory Inspectorate provided a new 12-week program of Qualified Assistant Kindergarten Teacher (QAKT) in 1982.
	Curriculum Guide	Curriculum Guide
	Manual of Kindergarten Practice and Guide to the Kindergarten Curriculum (1984) were produced.	Developed Activity Guidelines (1982) for Childcare Centres.
	Policy Recommendations
	Education Commission Report No. 2 recommended KG to have 40% and 60% teachers trained (QAKT or QKT) by 1990 and 1994 respectively.
	Government (1986) required kindergarten principals to complete QKT program.