Develop and articulate ideas for describing leading change in an organisation

A case of leading change in an aided secondary school in Hong Kong


I. Introduction

The case to be shared is an aided secondary school in Hong Kong with significant changes brought about by a new school principal, Mr C. Recently, I have conducted a small scale case study through interviews with the principal, teachers, parents, students and alumni, as well as observation in the school. The purpose of my study was to learn from Mr C and I could carry out the study smoothly as he has been my friend for many years.

II. Background of the school under study

The school is a traditional Christian aided school with about fifty years of history. The student intake has been dropping slightly and gradually during the past decade, before Mr C joined the school four years ago.


Before him, the ex-principal was promoted from a teacher of the school when he was about forty and had served in the school for more than thirty years, with about twenty years as the principal before retirement.

III. Education and Professional Background of the Principal

Mr C joined the then Education Department of Hong Kong (now the Education Bureau) in his early twenties and had served in a few sections. Apart from pursuing a Bachelor Degree and a Certificate in Education as the basic professional qualifications, he got two Master Degrees and also a Certificate in Special Education. He left the government after serving for about ten years and joined a brand new aided secondary school as a vice-principal. After five years, he joined another aided school, which was of a contracting enrolment and admitted mostly very low academic achievers, as the principal. He served in this contracting school for just two years and then joined the school under study to replace the retired ex-principal.

IV. Difficulties in leading change

Being a traditional Christian school with relatively long history and led by the former principal for about twenty years, the school was tied with strong and long established culture. It can be expected that Mr C, being a newcomer to the school, needs to put much extra effort if he wants to make some changes to the school culture. Some of the teachers tended to be quite reluctant to any change.

V. Changes in the School Landscape Brought about by the Principal

Mr C advocates change for the rapidly changing world and trusts the teachers by allowing them much freedom to tailor the curriculum, adopt new teaching pedagogy, and provide innovative suggestions and ideas on school programs and plans. Apart from encouraging teachers to pursue life-long learning, he also encourages them to learn the new initiatives and curriculum through interflow to the Education Bureau, inter/intra-school sharing amongst teachers, and also sharing with “super-teachers” from China through lesson demonstration and co-teaching.


It is worth to point out that Mr C has developed very good e-learning environment and systems for all the schools he had served, including the present one. He persistently keeps on with his principles and belief of making use of Information Technology (IT) to improve learning and teaching. In the school under study, he advocates extensive use of IT in education through intranet, internet and e-books as he considers IT a very effective tool which can facilitate learning and teaching. To further enhance the IT environment, he made a bid for the support of the School Management Committee in his first year as the school principal to acquire and allocate more resources for upgrading of the IT facilities of the school through obtaining additional funding from Quality Education Funds and donation from parents and alumni. By doing so, he has significantly raised the standard of the facilities of Multi-media Language Centre, Computer Laboratory and computer systems installed in library, etc. Most teachers are also trained and equipped with the knowledge and skills in IT in Education.


Mr C has also put much effort to provide the students with better studying environment, better access to computers and more guidance on their individual learning needs. For instance, the school library closing times have been extended from 6:00 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. during school days and 12:00 noon to 7:00 p.m. on Saturdays respectively, with alumni being invited to be voluntary helpers of the library. Apart from helping in the regular book borrowing and returning matters, the helpers also play the role as tutors. As a result, many students living in the vicinity of the school stay in the school library and study hard until the library closes.


Mr C believes that whole-person education of the students is most important. In the past four years, much effort was put into improving the discipline of the students. As a result, most students are well-behaved, polite, tidily and neatly dressed, and the overall image and popularity of the school have improved. This is also reflected by an increase in the number of pupils applying for Secondary One places during the Discretionary Places Admission Stage in the past three years, despite the fact that there is a general drop of Primary Six students, including in the district of the school’s location. The banding of the Secondary One intakes has also been improving, though not quite significantly yet. Moreover, there are more applications from students of other schools for transferring to the school in the past three years.


Another important factor attributing to the effectiveness of the school should rest on the students’ learning process, which can be reflected by their learning outcome. It is noted that the academic results of the students, in terms of the passing rate in the public examinations and the percentage of students being admitted to the universities, have increased drastically.

Moreover, every student is provided with a lot of opportunities to develop their talents, e.g. in sport, dancing, singing, drama, speech and debate. Apart from providing students with adequate opportunities to participate in various local competitions and performance, e.g. Speech and Mathematics competitions, being a principal with good social connection and technological mind, he has initiated the use of video conferencing to conduct debates in English with a prestige school in Malaysia since he joined the school four years ago. To the students and teachers, it is encouraging that it won the debates in the past three years.