Art Education Following the Implementation of the New Senior Secondary Curriculum

The publication of the Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education (HKDSE) results, in its third year in 2013, coincided with mounting concern over its marking schemes and assessment criteria. Visual arts, among other HKDSE subjects, is a major source of worry for many local visual arts teachers. At the Legislative Council meeting on April 17, 2013, Ma Fung-kwok, Legislative Council Member for the “Sports, Performing Arts, Culture and Publication” Functional Constituency, urged the Education Bureau to examine the reasons for the increase in the number of students dropping the Visual Arts subject. On May Fourth in the same year, the day that marks the intellectual, cultural and political movement growing out of student demonstrations in Beijing in 1919, disgruntled Hong Kong student and teacher representatives took to the streets as a protest to the authorities over the newly announced revisions to the assessment guide for the Visual Arts subject in the HKDSE. This essay will study the impacts and outcomes that the “New Senior Secondary Academic Structure” have had on visual arts education in Hong Kong since its implementation, and shed lights on the pressing issues and problems facing education arts in Hong Kong.

Free trade has been a rock on the back of the Hong Kong economy, but the intensifying pace of globalization is forcing the city to develop its edge. The government’s vision for arts and cultural development in the new millennium is to build a brand image for the city by investing heavily in cultural infrastructure and creating a strong driving force for the territory’s economy, business and finance. The West Kowloon Cultural District project is one of such large-scale initiatives designed to facilitate the long-term development of the city as an international arts and cultural metropolis and transform the district into an arts hub. To stimulate a transition to the creative economy, various polices and measures for the creative industries have been outlined in policy addresses and budget speeches under the three administrations since the 1997 handover. Nurturing talent in the arts became an integral part of social development and local schools had to diversify in function with the aim to develop and supply a large pool of creative and arts management talent for future social development. At the same time, there emerged a need to cultivate a love and knowledge of the arts in the general public and turn them into discerning audiences and consumers of the arts. Only then would the city be equipped with the competitive edge to meet the challenges that the new millennium brought.