This project proposes to organize a total of 30 members of six Catholic Diocesan secondary schools to visit schools in Shanghai. As the UGC (1998:52) points out, Hong Kong principals and teachers would benefit from their counterparts in mainland China through exchange activities. The purpose of the proposed visit is to help the participants understand better the educational practices and systems in the mainland, to facilitate reflections on their own practices, and thus to improve their schools in Hong Kong.

This is not a 'tourist' type of visit. The proposed visit has a clear focus on the area of school-based teacher development. It begins with pre-visit workshops and introductory talks conducted by experts in Hong Kong and Shanghai respectively, through which the participants will be well-prepared and sensitized with knowledge about theories and practices before they visit schools in Shanghai. In addition to the visit of some effective schools during the seven-day tour, a short period of placement in one of the schools will be organized for the participants based on their preferences, so as to ensure deeper understanding. Furthermore, a seminar held at the end of the visit will facilitate exchange and discourse among the participants as well as the formulation of development plans. After the visit, the six schools will form a quality circle to work collaboratively so as to improve professional development of their teachers. One year after the visit, their experiences and practices will be summarised and presented to a public conference open to members of all Catholic Diocesan schools as well as other schools in Hong Kong. The visit is deliberately scheduled during Christmas holidays to avoid causing disruption of school operation.

The benefits of the study visit will not be restricted to the personal experiences gained by the participants. It will ultimately lead to the improvement of teacher development in the participating schools in particular and that of the whole system in general. The short-term effectiveness of the project could be assessed generally based on the evaluation made by the participants after the visit; in the longer term the effectiveness could be evaluated based on the implementation of action plans or innovations on teacher development.

The project is not a seven-day project but a seven-day visit plus one-year of school development provided with professional support and guidance by the Centre for Educational Leadership. In this project, the total budget for 30 principals, school administrators and teachers to is just over half a million dollars; approximately ninety thousand per school or eighteen thousand per person. The budget covers training, transportation, accommodation, school visits and placement, consultancy and administration fees.