Arthur Li

Arthur Li Kwok-cheung GBS JP (born 27 June 1945) is a member of the Executive Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and was Secretary for Education and Manpower from August 2002 to June 2007. He is the grandson of the co-founder of the Bank of East Asia, Li Koon-chun, and brother of its current chairman, David Li.

Life and career

An alumnus of St. Paul's Co-educational College and a classmate of Professor Lawrence J. Lau, Li received his medical training at the University of Cambridge. He was subsequently trained at Middlesex Hospital Medical School and Harvard Medical School, before returning to Hong Kong to become the founding chairman of the Department of Surgery and Dean of Medicine at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Li's tenure as Secretary for Education and Manpower was marked by an era of education reforms that included the School-Based Management Policy. Since 2000, the Education and Manpower Bureau has implemented a number of mandates, including having teachers spend more time with students outside the classroom, adding exams for subjects such as English and history, and ordering that teachers take benchmark assessments to prove their language abilities. Li ostensibly retired from public service in 2007.