ABSTRACT
The adoption of market rules in the education sector has fundamentally changed Hong Kong’s school choice policy as well as other education policies in many ways. Most significantly, there is a new emphasis on competition, choice, accountability, performativity of schools. The introduction of the Direct Subsidy Scheme (DSS) exemplifies the adoption of market rules in the education sector. DSS has also generated many controversies, one of which mainly focuses on top traditional aided-schools joining DSS and charging high tuition fees. Various members in the community are concerned that families with low social-economic status would be deterred from applying these schools. More importantly, while DSS was originally introduced to enhance parental choice, with these aided-schools leaving the public sector and joining the DSS and charging tuition fees, many poor families perceive that their choices of school have actually decreased. This chapter analyses the DSS in Hong Kong as a choice policy. It first gives an account of the DSS as a school choice policy in the education market; second, a case study is presented to illustrate the reactions of different stakeholders involved in DSS, and finally, it further discusses the implications of DSS as a school choice policy in Hong Kong in the twenty-first century.
