A Case Study of Curriculum Reform in Basic Education in Macao SAR

Since the 1990s, the basic education reform in the world has been mainly about how to transform the quality and connotation of education. Most policies aimed at the new round of curriculum reform, such as introducing the concepts of learning literacy and learning outcomes, providing various opportunities for student development and mobility of social stratum. Since Macao's returned in 1999, the economy has developed rapidly, and the society is in transformation. There were a lot of resources which have been invested in the reform of basic education. However, in the face of challenges such as the massive outflow of local high school graduates and the limited overall scale of schools, it is urgent to establish an education system with Macao characteristics and meeting social needs. This paper aims to discuss how Macao's basic education curriculum reform should response to the requirements of talents in the new century. Through the curriculum reform experience of M middle school, a well-known one-stop school in Macao in recent ten years, this paper discusses the experience of curriculum reform and its practices, as well as the challenges encountered in the process of reform under the background of learners' diverse and different needs in the network era. Finally, this paper summarized the experience of the curriculum reform of the above case schools, which not only has an impact on Macao's basic education, but also is worthy of being a reference for other regions.