WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:12.000 Music 00:00:12.000 --> 00:00:17.000 Thank you for the welcome and it is really very enjoyable to be here. 00:00:17.000 --> 00:00:27.000 I think one of the problems with being designated as a keynote speaker is that you may get the impression that everything there is to know about school-based assessment will be contained in my presentation. 00:00:27.000 --> 00:00:35.460 It will not, but I hope that I can share with you this morning some insights and some ideas 00:00:35.460 --> 00:00:42.140 about school-based assessment that will generate some debate and discussion, because as we've 00:00:42.140 --> 00:00:45.140 heard this morning, there are people here from many different jurisdictions in many 00:00:45.140 --> 00:00:46.360 different parts of the world. 00:00:46.369 --> 00:00:54.969 and so it will be very useful in the discussion sessions to try and get some synergy of ideas, etc. 00:00:55.889 --> 00:01:02.249 I want to start off by simply saying that assessment, while we're going to talk about it in a very special context today, 00:01:02.369 --> 00:01:06.209 that assessment is really a process in which we're engaged all the time. 00:01:06.209 --> 00:01:13.869 You know, whenever we make judgments about the clothes that we wear or the jewellery that we wear 00:01:13.869 --> 00:01:20.269 or the perfume that you selected at the duty free as you came through this morning. We 00:01:20.269 --> 00:01:26.429 make judgements about those. We make individual judgements, we make personal judgements. In 00:01:26.429 --> 00:01:32.729 a sense it's a little like Elliot Eisner's connoisseurship model of evaluation. Those 00:01:32.738 --> 00:01:41.038 very subjective. They are very much based on our own predilections. And the judgments that I make 00:01:41.038 --> 00:01:45.618 are not the judgments that you might make. And so our daily experience of assessment 00:01:45.618 --> 00:01:52.018 is a little bit different from what we expect of public assessment. You know, even when we go to 00:01:52.018 --> 00:02:00.358 the doctor and the doctor tells us, makes a judgment, contrary to what Isabel was saying, 00:02:00.358 --> 00:02:04.858 makes a judgment often the doctor says but if it doesn't work come back next 00:02:04.858 --> 00:02:09.238 week and I'll give you another set of medication and we'll see if that works 00:02:09.238 --> 00:02:13.798 so even the doctors and the judgments of doctors and are not all that 00:02:13.798 --> 00:02:19.118 predictive sometimes and so we learn to live with tentativeness and 00:02:19.107 --> 00:02:26.307 of assessment with inconsistency and with subjectivity every day. But when it comes 00:02:26.307 --> 00:02:36.087 to schools, we demand much more than that. When it comes to schools, sorry, let me see 00:02:36.087 --> 00:02:42.327 if we can go this way. When it comes to schools, we want exactly the opposite of what we get 00:02:42.327 --> 00:02:48.347 in daily life. We want valid and reliable assessments. We want assessments that are 00:02:48.347 --> 00:02:53.527 transparent and fair and that can be used for making decisions. And very often these 00:02:53.527 --> 00:03:00.347 decisions are life-changing decisions. Assessment in educational contexts very 00:03:00.347 --> 00:03:05.467 often has a high-stakes quality about it. It doesn't apply to the 00:03:05.476 --> 00:03:11.776 kind of assessments that we make on a daily basis. Very often the assessments that we make 00:03:11.776 --> 00:03:19.016 in schools determine what school a child will go to, whether the child will progress from class to 00:03:19.016 --> 00:03:25.256 class, whether they'll progress from one level of schooling to the next. This is often called the 00:03:25.256 --> 00:03:31.916 sifting and sorting function of assessment and some colleagues and I have used the term 00:03:31.916 --> 00:03:36.716 instrumental aspects of assessment and I want this morning to to make these 00:03:36.716 --> 00:03:41.936 distinctions very clear because very often when educators get together we 00:03:41.936 --> 00:03:45.956 talk only about educational things but I want to suggest this morning that 00:03:45.956 --> 00:03:51.856 assessment in fact does have instrumental purposes in our societies and it's 00:03:51.844 --> 00:03:55.064 those purposes that we need to address. 00:03:56.044 --> 00:04:00.524 Even though we know that there are educational purposes for assessment, 00:04:01.204 --> 00:04:08.844 we need to get very clear what we mean by those purposes for assessment 00:04:08.844 --> 00:04:13.904 that are not necessarily educational and that serve social purposes. 00:04:13.904 --> 00:04:18.904 So what I'd like to do this morning is to... 00:04:18.904 --> 00:04:20.544 Three things, if I can. 00:04:21.844 --> 00:04:26.664 I want to identify what I'm going to call different forms of school-based assessment 00:04:26.664 --> 00:04:33.184 because I want to try and get the concepts right, at least from my perspective, and you 00:04:33.184 --> 00:04:38.224 may want to debate about these a little later on. I do want to look at the 00:04:38.213 --> 00:04:45.033 social and cultural contexts of assessment. I realise that this may sound a little bit 00:04:45.033 --> 00:04:51.793 theoretical, but I think that in this case, theory may be helpful to us. And I do want 00:04:51.793 --> 00:04:57.973 to examine the criteria for successful high stakes SBA in Asian context. So they're 00:04:57.973 --> 00:05:05.253 more three purposes, moving from that everyday assessment that we experience to assessment 00:05:05.253 --> 00:05:09.493 in schools and assessment for different purposes. 00:05:09.493 --> 00:05:16.373 So let me come now to assessment for learning and school-based assessment. 00:05:16.373 --> 00:05:22.253 I think it's very important here to get some clarification. 00:05:22.253 --> 00:05:24.573 I think it's not a new idea. 00:05:24.582 --> 00:05:30.562 that classrooms are sites for assessment. We all know, many of us here have been teachers, 00:05:30.562 --> 00:05:36.222 that on a daily basis we engage in assessment of students in classrooms for all kinds of 00:05:36.222 --> 00:05:42.682 purposes. But very recently, say in the last decade, assessment has taken a very high profile. 00:05:42.682 --> 00:05:49.142 So you get a group like the Organisation for Economic Development in Paris telling us that 00:05:49.142 --> 00:05:52.482 But formative assessment is really important. 00:05:52.482 --> 00:05:57.342 Now when a high profile group like OECD tells you that formative assessment is important, 00:05:57.342 --> 00:06:01.862 you know that's because it has something to do with the economy. 00:06:01.862 --> 00:06:07.842 So suddenly assessment takes on a purpose much greater than it normally would if it 00:06:07.842 --> 00:06:10.942 was just an educational purposes. 00:06:10.951 --> 00:06:23.291 And one of the reasons, of course, is related to the group that Isabel mentioned earlier on, that is the assessment reform group, that has done so much work on issues around feedback to students. 00:06:24.191 --> 00:06:27.291 Feedback to students is fundamentally important. 00:06:27.291 --> 00:06:32.531 important. The work of that group and the work of people like Dylan Williams, et cetera, 00:06:32.531 --> 00:06:39.211 has shown that in those classrooms where students are regularly fed back information about their 00:06:39.211 --> 00:06:43.511 learning, that they will improve. 00:06:43.511 --> 00:06:52.311 And so this new trend in assessment, focused on classrooms, focused in schools, you might 00:06:52.311 --> 00:06:56.651 loosely call school-based assessment. Now, I'm going to suggest later on that's not quite 00:06:56.651 --> 00:06:57.331 the best way. 00:06:57.320 --> 00:07:04.120 to do it. But it was this assessment for learning agenda that became so important in Hong Kong. 00:07:06.840 --> 00:07:16.040 Hong Kong, after the return of the city to Chinese sovereignty, underwent and is still 00:07:16.040 --> 00:07:22.780 undergoing a very significant reform process. Everything in education has been reformed. 00:07:22.780 --> 00:07:32.340 Every single structure has been changed as part of a very significant set of reforms, 00:07:32.340 --> 00:07:35.620 and a lot of it was around assessment. 00:07:35.620 --> 00:07:43.680 And assessment for learning became, if you like, the mantra that came out of the 00:07:43.689 --> 00:07:51.869 Education Bureau. The Curriculum Development Council, for example, suggested that one way 00:07:51.869 --> 00:08:01.189 to improve schools was through changing school assessments. One way to improve teaching was 00:08:01.189 --> 00:08:11.449 to have more formative assessment in classrooms. And so you do get these kind of criteria suggested 00:08:11.449 --> 00:08:17.909 from the Cricket and Development Council, which was indeed in around 2000, 2001, a great 00:08:17.909 --> 00:08:23.449 challenge to many teachers and many schools. 00:08:23.449 --> 00:08:30.049 But at the same time, as teachers in Hong Kong were being encouraged to focus more on 00:08:30.058 --> 00:08:36.678 classroom assessment, not to rely so much on tests, etc. The old British examination 00:08:36.678 --> 00:08:43.098 system was coming to an end, but exams were not coming to an end, just the British system 00:08:43.098 --> 00:08:48.858 was coming to an end, just as the colonial period had come to an end. 00:08:48.858 --> 00:08:52.238 And while assessment for learning was being generally promoted as part of the curriculum 00:08:52.238 --> 00:09:02.758 reform, this new examination at the end of Form 6 was starting to be planned and starting 00:09:02.758 --> 00:09:11.478 to be implemented. As Biggs pointed out, examinations and norm-referenced assessment were very much 00:09:11.478 --> 00:09:16.418 part of Hong Kong's colonial experience, and I suspect part of the colonial experience 00:09:16.427 --> 00:09:23.767 of much of this region. And so moving to assessment for learning was a very big step and it was 00:09:23.767 --> 00:09:32.527 not taken without some reference now to a major examination. Yet as Hong Kong's system 00:09:32.527 --> 00:09:39.367 started to move and started to change under these reforms, it was nevertheless the language 00:09:39.367 --> 00:09:44.287 of assessment for learning that was important. 00:09:44.287 --> 00:09:50.607 So that's one way that you can look at school-based assessment is around issues of assessment 00:09:50.607 --> 00:09:51.607 for learning. 00:09:51.607 --> 00:10:02.787 And in fact, in 2007, when the first attempts at school-based assessment were made, 00:10:02.796 --> 00:10:07.456 it was on the back of the assessment for learning agenda. 00:10:08.876 --> 00:10:21.956 Now Hong Kong had experienced school-based assessment actually for quite some time in school subjects like chemistry and like design and technology, going as far back as 1978. 00:10:22.696 --> 00:10:26.176 So in one sense, school-based assessment was not new. 00:10:26.236 --> 00:10:28.976 Now let me define what I now mean by school-based assessment. 00:10:28.976 --> 00:10:37.256 assessment. I've been talking about assessment for learning, classroom based assessment. 00:10:37.256 --> 00:10:44.176 School based assessment with a capital S and a capital B and a capital A was also meant 00:10:44.176 --> 00:10:49.156 to be done in classrooms but as a form of assessment it was designed 00:10:49.164 --> 00:10:57.064 contribute to an end of school grade in a subject. So I want you to keep those two things 00:10:57.064 --> 00:11:05.224 separated. Classroom assessment, formative assessment, feedback to students, SBA, a component 00:11:05.224 --> 00:11:12.844 of assessment that counted towards a grade at the end of schooling. So Hong Kong had 00:11:12.844 --> 00:11:21.164 some experience of skill-based assessment and we know what it was like. For example, 00:11:21.164 --> 00:11:35.524 many teachers – this is a direct quote – many teachers – something's happening. 00:11:35.533 --> 00:11:42.653 I'll just continue to talk and someone will come and fix this. 00:11:42.653 --> 00:11:49.913 Even as early as 2005, it was recognised that the earlier forms of school-based assessment 00:11:49.913 --> 00:11:56.913 had, for teachers, created considerable stress and considerable problems. 00:11:56.913 --> 00:12:01.693 I have no idea. 00:12:01.693 --> 00:12:15.213 And we hear about these over and over again. We hear about teachers not having enough skills. 00:12:15.213 --> 00:12:21.893 We hear about teachers being overly stressed. We hear about school-based assessment in 00:12:21.902 --> 00:12:31.342 fact becoming more work. Remember the Director General made the statement this morning that 00:12:31.342 --> 00:12:37.322 school-based assessment is meant to be part of a more holistic assessment process. But 00:12:37.322 --> 00:12:44.802 in fact, what we find is even in the very earliest experiments with school-based assessment 00:12:44.802 --> 00:12:52.342 that, as it says here, many teachers viewed assessment as additional work imposed on them 00:12:52.342 --> 00:12:57.182 by the authorities and together with a lack of implementation skills and supporting resources, 00:12:57.182 --> 00:13:03.102 the scheme adds extra workload and pressure to their routinely busy timetable. 00:13:03.102 --> 00:13:08.262 That is something I think which is experienced over and over again. 00:13:08.271 --> 00:13:16.431 again. But I think it goes a little bit further than that. Teachers express their concerns 00:13:16.431 --> 00:13:24.791 about can they design assessment tasks? Will it interfere with the student-teacher relationship 00:13:24.791 --> 00:13:37.511 in some way? And a different view that you can see there is something to take into consideration, 00:13:37.511 --> 00:13:39.331 I think. 00:13:39.331 --> 00:13:48.031 When the authority was preparing for SBA in that other sense that I suggested it, they 00:13:48.031 --> 00:13:50.431 came up with this quote. 00:13:50.431 --> 00:13:54.631 One reason put forward in the past for limiting school-based assessment is the public's ostensible 00:13:54.640 --> 00:14:00.120 of trust of teachers. This has been too readily accepted as received wisdom. It dates from 00:14:00.120 --> 00:14:04.700 a period before teaching was a trained profession and it no longer fits the modern education 00:14:04.700 --> 00:14:15.380 system. Now it is true that it's no longer the case, but old views and old habits die 00:14:15.380 --> 00:14:24.180 hard and this lack of trust in teachers becomes a really fundamental issue that, as you can 00:14:24.180 --> 00:14:29.120 see from the dates of some of these references as skill based assessment starts to be introduced 00:14:29.120 --> 00:14:34.600 or starts to be thought about, the issue of whether teachers can do it. 00:14:34.600 --> 00:14:41.020 The issue of public confidence becomes a fundamental issue. So nothing to do 00:14:41.009 --> 00:14:47.349 with daily work in schools in a sense, but everything to do with the way school-based 00:14:47.349 --> 00:14:59.509 assessment is seen in the community. Examinations and examinations-oriented approaches have been 00:14:59.509 --> 00:15:07.929 accepted in Hong Kong now for a very long time. And that approach to assessment really 00:15:07.929 --> 00:15:13.869 makes people in society, the community, if you like, focus on assessment of learning rather 00:15:13.869 --> 00:15:21.449 than assessment for learning. The community itself and those who are 00:15:21.449 --> 00:15:27.369 successful in the community have become successful because of examinations. And so when 00:15:27.378 --> 00:15:33.918 When they see things that look as though they might threaten examinations, like a school-based 00:15:33.918 --> 00:15:40.238 assessment, it becomes symptomatic and problematic. 00:15:40.238 --> 00:15:50.418 And this is the kind of view that really typifies how, in the community at least, examinations 00:15:50.418 --> 00:15:54.058 have been seen for a very long time. 00:15:54.058 --> 00:15:57.738 The Wellon Committee was a very important committee in Hong Kong that set in place some 00:15:57.738 --> 00:16:02.298 very significant educational reforms in the early 1980s. 00:16:02.298 --> 00:16:07.898 But this view here of examinations, examinations are used to establish a ranking order among 00:16:07.898 --> 00:16:13.758 students as a basis for allocating a small number of places among a large number of applicants, 00:16:13.747 --> 00:16:22.847 qualification. This view of examinations, even though the date here is 1982, I want to argue is 00:16:22.847 --> 00:16:30.387 still the view of many members of the community in Hong Kong. And I would suggest, but you will 00:16:30.387 --> 00:16:36.247 tell me if I'm wrong, that it probably is not far from the view of many people within the region 00:16:36.247 --> 00:16:45.087 as well. It's an old view, it's a different view, but nevertheless it's a view that continues 00:16:45.087 --> 00:16:53.407 to have currency. We see it expressed here that public examinations cannot have helped 00:16:53.407 --> 00:17:00.127 but influence Hong Kong and influences what happens in the classroom. So that's by 00:17:00.116 --> 00:17:08.036 way of background to the introduction of SBA into Hong Kong. But the point I really want 00:17:08.036 --> 00:17:15.116 to make is that given that background, given that history, nevertheless, the Hong Kong 00:17:15.116 --> 00:17:21.136 Examination and Assessment Authority made very significant attempts to address these 00:17:21.136 --> 00:17:31.276 issues by linking classroom assessment and school-based assessment, formative assessment 00:17:31.276 --> 00:17:38.536 and feedback to students with school-based assessment, that component of the final examination. 00:17:38.536 --> 00:17:45.136 I think it's to the credit of the Hong Kong Assessment and Examinations Authority that 00:17:45.136 --> 00:17:46.476 they did this. 00:17:46.484 --> 00:17:55.484 Around about 2007, you get the first new trial, if you like, of SBA. 00:17:55.484 --> 00:18:01.564 And it is in language, and it can be justified in the most obvious way. 00:18:01.564 --> 00:18:03.604 It was around oral assessment. 00:18:03.604 --> 00:18:12.344 15% of the final mark of students in the old Hong Kong certificate of education would go 00:18:12.344 --> 00:18:15.004 on oral assessment tasks. 00:18:15.004 --> 00:18:19.824 And this was under the direction of Professor Chris Davison, who's now at the University 00:18:19.824 --> 00:18:21.364 of New South Wales. 00:18:21.364 --> 00:18:27.064 And she and her team went to great lengths and great efforts to train teachers, to prepare 00:18:27.064 --> 00:18:32.844 teachers for what was essentially a new generation SBA. 00:18:32.853 --> 00:18:40.633 if you like, given that there'd already been some general issues with SBA earlier on with 00:18:40.633 --> 00:18:43.513 some of those other subjects that I mentioned before. 00:18:44.133 --> 00:18:49.973 And so the linking together of summative and formative assessments in the new SBA initiative 00:18:49.973 --> 00:18:55.953 was, in a sense, the hallmark of the Hong Kong experiment with SBA. 00:18:55.953 --> 00:19:07.573 It is, I think, a very clever strategy, but I now want to make the point and I want to 00:19:07.573 --> 00:19:17.073 argue that it may not be the strategy in the end that wins support for SBA, even though 00:19:17.073 --> 00:19:19.213 I think to educators. 00:19:19.222 --> 00:19:27.862 It makes a lot of sense, but often the things that make a lot of sense to educators don't make a lot of sense to other people in the community. 00:19:27.862 --> 00:19:36.202 And so what I want to do now is to question whether SBA can really be used as assessment for learning. 00:19:38.842 --> 00:19:45.862 My view is that SBA is a high-stakes activity. 00:19:45.862 --> 00:19:53.802 community. And by definition, it is linked, at least in the minds of students, in the 00:19:53.802 --> 00:20:01.362 minds of teachers, and I would argue in the minds of the community, with assessment of 00:20:01.362 --> 00:20:05.602 learning. Since it contributes to the final assessment, 00:20:05.591 --> 00:20:10.471 for students, certainly true in Hong Kong in 2007, 00:20:10.991 --> 00:20:15.691 and has become true in terms of the new Diploma of Secondary Education. 00:20:17.111 --> 00:20:21.031 SBA still serves the selection process, 00:20:21.031 --> 00:20:23.871 just as the final examination does. 00:20:24.831 --> 00:20:28.551 And so when you say that SBA is really classroom assessment, 00:20:29.151 --> 00:20:33.771 to me, that confuses the purposes of assessment. 00:20:33.771 --> 00:20:43.611 system. And it makes SBA even more stressful when its purposes are uncertain or ambiguous. 00:20:43.611 --> 00:20:49.951 Now I want to say that I think the attempt to link it is probably from an educational 00:20:49.951 --> 00:20:51.951 point of view. 00:20:51.960 --> 00:20:52.960 Quite a good idea. 00:20:54.040 --> 00:20:56.000 But in terms of some of the evaluation, 00:20:56.680 --> 00:20:58.460 it's quite clear that in classrooms, 00:20:58.840 --> 00:21:01.340 neither teachers nor students have always been able 00:21:01.340 --> 00:21:03.200 to distinguish the difference. 00:21:03.980 --> 00:21:06.900 They don't know what is classroom assessment 00:21:06.900 --> 00:21:08.520 and what is SBA. 00:21:09.340 --> 00:21:12.720 And it becomes confusing for them in that context. 00:21:13.980 --> 00:21:16.920 So my argument is that when SBA is to serve 00:21:16.920 --> 00:21:18.280 instrumental purposes, 00:21:19.100 --> 00:21:21.440 such as a contribution to a final exam score, 00:21:21.960 --> 00:21:25.800 It's better to treat it like that. 00:21:25.800 --> 00:21:32.560 It's better to let everybody know that this is high-stakes assessment. 00:21:32.560 --> 00:21:36.440 And I'll explain in a little while when I talk about the cultural context why I think 00:21:36.440 --> 00:21:38.320 that is the case. 00:21:38.329 --> 00:21:45.329 I think too there are some links with standards-based assessment with the Hong Kong SBA. I don't 00:21:45.329 --> 00:21:52.109 want to go into that this morning except to say that I'm not convinced that the standards 00:21:52.109 --> 00:21:57.209 referenced assessment in the Diploma of Secondary Education has been particularly helpful in 00:21:57.209 --> 00:22:02.149 terms of schools and school-based assessment. But it is an aspect of school-based assessment 00:22:02.149 --> 00:22:04.289 in Hong Kong. 00:22:04.289 --> 00:22:09.989 So let me try and summarise this section of the paper. What I really wanted to say was 00:22:09.989 --> 00:22:17.929 that in the Hong Kong context SBA was linked with a much broader reform agenda about assessment, 00:22:17.929 --> 00:22:23.149 assessment that was designed to change the nature of Hong Kong classrooms, to make them 00:22:23.149 --> 00:22:24.689 more student friendly. 00:22:24.698 --> 00:22:30.798 friendly, to make them less test dominated, to make them less drill dominated. I could 00:22:30.798 --> 00:22:37.858 even use some of the words that the Director General used earlier. But the way in which 00:22:37.858 --> 00:22:44.258 SBA has worked out has not really led to some of those issues, and I'll talk about that 00:22:44.258 --> 00:22:50.398 a bit later on as well. I think initially the problems have been in trying to get the 00:22:50.398 --> 00:22:56.118 purposes right? What is the purpose of school-based assessment? And I think the purposes have 00:22:56.118 --> 00:23:05.218 been a little bit confusing in some of the Hong Kong context. Why are they confusing? 00:23:05.218 --> 00:23:11.058 Let me move to the next part of the paper, which is to look at the social and cultural 00:23:11.067 --> 00:23:18.187 of assessment. And I just want to make three points, three relatively quick points but 00:23:18.187 --> 00:23:24.567 complex ones. The first point I want to make is that teachers in Chinese societies have 00:23:24.567 --> 00:23:30.887 very distinctive views of assessment. First point. The second is that assessment policies 00:23:30.887 --> 00:23:35.967 are embedded in broader social context. And thirdly, that there are definitional issues 00:23:35.967 --> 00:23:42.067 relating to these things. So let me try and do these things. I'm going to start off with 00:23:42.067 --> 00:23:53.847 assessment policies and their cultural contexts, because I think this is really fundamental. 00:23:53.847 --> 00:23:57.447 Examinations everywhere always have and always will. 00:23:57.436 --> 00:24:07.396 serve meritocratic purposes, whether they're in Hong Kong or Singapore or New York or Sydney 00:24:07.396 --> 00:24:08.036 or London. 00:24:09.156 --> 00:24:13.256 The results from examinations benefit people in some way. 00:24:14.636 --> 00:24:21.516 I used a term recently about education that there's still a certain social elevator aspect 00:24:21.516 --> 00:24:23.116 of education. 00:24:23.336 --> 00:24:25.056 Education takes you places. 00:24:25.056 --> 00:24:26.956 It's meritocratic in that sense. 00:24:26.956 --> 00:24:34.516 and examinations serve that purpose. My argument in an Asian context is that the meritocratic 00:24:34.516 --> 00:24:41.676 nature of examinations, that is the benefits that exams can give to people, are highly 00:24:41.676 --> 00:24:43.796 valued. Perhaps much more highly valued. 00:24:43.804 --> 00:24:51.984 valued than they are in Western contexts. People may want to argue about that. And they 00:24:51.984 --> 00:24:59.604 provide pathways to elite universities. They provide pathways to elite jobs. Examinations 00:24:59.604 --> 00:25:07.364 exclude some and include others. So the benefits, for example, of a university education are 00:25:07.364 --> 00:25:10.344 seen to be extraordinarily great. 00:25:10.344 --> 00:25:12.284 But isn't it the same everywhere? 00:25:12.284 --> 00:25:14.184 Aren't exams always like this? 00:25:14.184 --> 00:25:23.124 I want to argue that in Asian context, and you can disagree with me later on, I think 00:25:23.124 --> 00:25:26.084 the pressures are much greater. 00:25:26.084 --> 00:25:30.164 I've now lived in Hong Kong for 12 years. 00:25:30.173 --> 00:25:36.473 I'm not a Hong Kong person, but one gets to observe. 00:25:37.253 --> 00:25:42.873 And the day before I came, I watched the release of the primary one places. 00:25:43.453 --> 00:25:49.533 These are the places where students graduating from early childhood centres go into primary schools. 00:25:50.233 --> 00:25:56.293 And the media, of course, catches this up with parents crying because their children don't get into the best primary schools. 00:25:56.733 --> 00:25:59.693 Because if they don't get into the best primary schools, they don't get into the best secondary schools. 00:25:59.693 --> 00:26:00.693 if they don't get into the best. 00:26:00.693 --> 00:26:03.773 Secondary schools, they don't get into the best universities. 00:26:03.773 --> 00:26:09.393 One observes a lot after 12 years. 00:26:09.393 --> 00:26:14.773 But I think one of the issues in many Asian contexts that speaks to this pressure is the 00:26:14.773 --> 00:26:16.553 private tutoring industry. 00:26:16.542 --> 00:26:32.562 The private tutoring industry in this part of the world, whether it's in Hong Kong, whether it's in Korea, whether it's in Taiwan, whether it's in Kuala Lumpur, plays a quite fundamental role in the lives of young people. 00:26:33.802 --> 00:26:37.262 And what happens in private tutoring? 00:26:37.822 --> 00:26:41.362 What are the main purposes of private tutoring? 00:26:41.362 --> 00:26:50.002 Well, one of the main purposes of private tutoring is to enhance examination performance. 00:26:50.002 --> 00:26:54.522 What are some of the things that students do when they go to private tutoring? They learn 00:26:54.522 --> 00:27:01.702 to answer exam questions. And they learn to answer them over and over and over again. 00:27:01.702 --> 00:27:02.922 And the very important work. 00:27:02.911 --> 00:27:15.651 of Mark Bray in Hong Kong and Percy Kwok have shown, irrespective of context, that parents 00:27:15.651 --> 00:27:22.671 are willing to invest in private tutoring to enhance the meritocratic performance of 00:27:22.671 --> 00:27:23.351 their children. 00:27:25.471 --> 00:27:29.991 This does not happen in many Western contexts. 00:27:29.991 --> 00:27:38.471 It is a distinct feature of our region, whether it's in Pakistan, whether it's here, whether 00:27:38.471 --> 00:27:40.831 it's in North Asia. 00:27:40.831 --> 00:27:48.071 And so the examinations take on a quite distinctive characteristic in this part of the world.