In Hong Kong, the notion of professional learning community (PLC) can be traced back to a consultation document launched by the Advisory Committee on School-based Management (2000, p.1), “Transforming Schools into Dynamic and Accountable Professional Learning Communities”. This document highlighted the importance of PLCs in enhancing the effectiveness of learning and teaching and for improving students’ learning outcomes. It was hoped that through engaging in interactions, dialogues, feedback and reflections, teachers could view their colleagues as learning partners and are willing to contribute to each other’s professional learning.  

While there has been a call for the development of PLCs in Hong Kong schools, there is no explicit policy on mandatory requirements of PLCs. From the years of 2000 to 2017, the Author has been successfully working collaboratively with over 500 kindergartens, primary schools and secondary schools in launching school-university partnership (USP) projects in Hong Kong. The main themes of these projects include school self-evaluation, organizational learning, metacognition, and assessment for learning. These USP projects aim to enhance the quality of school education in general and build professional learning communities in particular.  

It is to argue that school-university partnership (SUP) may be an effective way to initiate, lead, and manage organizational change in schools and assure the quality of education. After introducing the details of a series of SUP projects in Hong Kong, and setting in context, this paper reports on an investigation into the effectiveness of implementing professional learning communities in Hong Kong schools. Lastly, the issues of school-university partnership and the characteristics and conditions for effective school-university partnership in Hong Kong schools will be explored and examined.