Headed by Dr. Paul Nung, the Focus Inspection Team of Quality Assurance Division of EDB visited us on 24, 26 & 27 January, 2011 for a Focus Inspection (FI) on the Medium of Instruction (MOI) for the implementation of the Language Fine-tune Policy. Our Language Across Curriculum (LAC) Task Group, the School Improvement Team (SIT), the English Department and school community are delighted to greet them. They did lesson observations and interviews with selected teachers and students. They reviewed student works and examination papers. What is more, they inspected all the documents and extra-curricular activities which are language oriented. Key presentations were also given by Mr. Edward Chu, co-ordinator of Language Across the Curriculum Committee and Ms. Jenny Tse, Panel Head of English Department for the Team’s understanding of our language policy and progress of implementation.

Dr. Nung’s preliminary oral report on 27 January gave us much confidence and joyfulness. He found our school is capable of formulating a sound Cross-curricular Action Plan of promoting learning and teaching in English effectively. Strong effort has been made in the enhancement of English learning as a whole-school endeavour. The Bridging programme and EMI Learning Kit that were developed in August 2010 were appropriate and effective which geared to students’ learning needs and catered for their diversity. In the use of language to facilitate learning, all lessons observed were effective. Teachers are professional and their mastery of English is highly proficient. Most important of all, students assume a very positive attitude towards learning in English and they demonstrate ability to learn effectively in the medium of English. An English-rich learning environment is beginning to take shape and there has been strong consensus among teachers, students and parents. Several efforts which they value in particular include intensive attention being paid to the whole-school approach to English learning, the learning of vocabulary, the setting up of English Campus as well as Liberal Studies Campus and Green Campus for convenient learning in English, cross-curricular writings and inter-disciplinary learning project coordinated by the subject of Integrated Humanities, to name but a few. Developing student self-learning capacity is seen as one of our foci and it is progressing at a steady pace. He concluded on behalf of his team that ‘our progress has been promising’ so far, which in our opinion is quite a praise and it is an encouragement to tell us that all our hard work did pay and our students have been making very pleasing progress. To share our experience, our Principal and the LAC Team will be invited to the QAD year-end dissemination on MOI Focus Inspection at the end of this year.