EDUCATION AROUND THE WORLD

Table 1 provides the schematic of the Hong Kong system, and gives its U.S. equivalent. For example, a ten year-old would generally be in Primary 5, (fourth-grade in the U. S.), with school being both compulsory and free.

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1. The State Council is the top executive organization of the Chinese government. It is equivalent to the cabinet or council of ministers in other countries.
   
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2. "Key" schools are designated institutions that are given priority in the assignment of teachers, equipment and funds. Therefore, key schools are able to select and recruit the brightest students through an examination system. The number of key schools is very small compared to ordinary schools, although each level of government may have key schools. For example, there are national key institutions as well as provincial or municipal key institutions and county key institutions. Some provinces, however, abolished key schools during the 1980s.
   
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1. A major issue faced by many rural schools in South Africa is the need to improve their infrastructures. For example, one quarter of schools have no access to water within walking distance, and a majority of schools lacks electricity or proper sanitation facilities (Department of Education, 2000). In addition, most rural or remote schools are not adequately supplied with teaching and learning materials (ibid.).
   
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2. South Africa is a multilingual country with 11 official languages. Thus, language is a major issue in education. Laws state that the language of instruction in schools must be one of the officially recognized languages. Provincial education departments are responsible for establishing the language policies for the schools in their provinces. At the primary level, there have been recent efforts to make the language of instruction consistent with the language used in the community. However, in most institutions of higher education, the language of instruction is either English or Afrikaans (Department of Education, 1997).
   
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1. The percentage of students who actually complete the 12th year of schooling, leaving with a Year 12 certificate, is somewhat smaller, approximately 69 percent in 1991.
   
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1. The framework for the Special Administrative Region was set out in a Basic Law in 1990. Concerning education, the Law (Governments of Hong Kong/China 1990 p. 47) states that:

   On the basis of the previous educational system, the Government of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region shall, on its own, formulate policies on the development and improvement of education, including policies regarding the educational system and its administration, the language of instruction, the allocation of funds, the examination system, the system of academic awards and the recognition of educational qualifications.

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2. See chart for trends in annual government expenditure on education since 1985: http://www.info.gov.hk/ed/statisti/edind97e/edin4ae.htm
   
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1. Note that, because of transfer payments and other complexities in estimating how education is funded, estimates of levels of contributions for different levels of government can vary tremendously. While the OECD assigns most of elementary and secondary education funds to the "regional" - in the case of Japan, prefectural - category, other authors categorize funds across levels of government differently. For example, one author estimates that the education budgets for local governments in Japan include "resources from the prefectures (44.1%), the municipalities (32.3%), and the national government (18.9%)" (Frasz & Kato, p.23, citing Shimuzu et al., 1993).
   
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1. Note that the existence of multi-grade classes in Portugal is high -- 65% of primary schools in 1996. Multi-grade classes are comprised of children of more than one "grade", thus requiring the teacher to teach several grade levels and correspondingly, several subjects. "The use of multi-grade classes can be explained to some degree by the existence of many small schools, largely as an effect of geographic settings" (OECD, p. 161).
   
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1. In the United Kingdom, the word "public" in terms of education is actually used to refer to a relatively small number of elite, privately-maintained schools; therefore, the word "maintained" is used to refer to those schools funded and managed by governmental agencies.
   
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