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The Quality Education Fund (QEF), set up in 1998 with HK$5 billion, supports initiatives that promote quality education in Hong Kong. Since its establishment, the fund has supported over 7,000 applications with grants amounting to around HK$3.5 billion. To commend outstanding projects funded since 1998, the fund organized the QEF Projects Exposition 2008 on its tenth anniversary. Twenty projects received the Outstanding Project Award and another 101 received a certificate of merit. Among them, two outstanding awards and seven certificates of merit went to CUHK faculty.

The two outstanding projects were ‘Accelerated Schools for Quality Education’ led by Prof. John C.K. Lee, dean, Faculty of Education, and ‘V-China—Enhancing the Effectiveness of Teaching and Learning Using Video Conferencing Activities’ headed by Prof. Wong Po-choi of the Department of Information Engineering.

The accelerated schools project received over HK$60 million in 1998, one of the highest amount awarded since the inception of the fund. The aim of the project was to enhance school education by means of a university–school partnership model in three dimensions: school administration, curriculum and teaching, parents and community. It is estimated that the three-year project served 50 schools and benefited over 60,000 teachers, students and parents.

Prof. Lee was pleased with the results. He said the project had recruited many experienced school development officers to help with the implementation. Although it is now over, various ongoing quality education projects in diversified, comprehensive, interactive and sustainable partnership models have been derived from its concept.

The participating schools said the project helped them to identify their strengths and weaknesses and mapped out tailor-made strategies for them. It enabled them to remain clear about their aims in the face of education reforms.

The V-China project received HK$2.5 million to organize remote learning activities in schools in mainland China and Hong Kong through advanced video-conferencing technology. The project covers over 300 schools in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing, Hunan, Hangzhou, Ningbo, Xi’an, Lhasa and overseas. It enables students to gain knowledge of China through remote cultural exchanges with mainland schools in the forms of book sharing, debate competitions, and presentations, and also improve their Putonghua.

Prof. Wong was very happy to receive the award. He said the project has established a nationwide network in video teaching and is highly recognized by many provinces in mainland.