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the political elements in the national education component led to
considerable community upheaval and the eventual ?helving??of the
proposal. Nevertheless schools have continued with CME, although not in any
standard way. The lack of community consensus on the key elements of CME,
the insistence by Beijing authorities on the importance of national education
and the generally unstable global context constantly undermined by non-
state actors such as ISIS mean that CME has become an important focus area
for schools. Even though traditionally it is most often seen as a non-academic
area with a focus on personal development rather than social development, it
now takes on a new status within Hong Kong schools. In Western contexts
CME ( or its equivalent) is seen as the means through which schools fulfill
their civic mission for the development of active democratic citizens who will
have the capacity to transform civic knowledge into proper civic engagement
(Galston, 2001 & 2004; Ross, 2007; Sherrod, Torney-Purta & Flanagan, 2010).
Whether CME in the Hong Kong context can take on this role remains to be
seen. Yet its contested nature within the community, and even amongst
teachers (Wong, 2015), means that school leaders need to take it into
consideration so that civic learning becomes a priority alongside more
traditional academic learning outcomes.

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