From December 1 to 3, the 5th Across-Strait Four-Regions Education Faculty Dean’s Forum was successfully held in South China Normal University. The major theme for this education forum is on “development of core competencies”.

Nearly 40 education leaders and scholars participated in this forum, including University of Hong Kong, Taiwan Chengchi University, Taiwan Chung Cheng University, Beijing Normal University, Huazhong Normal University, Northeast Normal University and others. CityU Academic Registrar Dr. Shuying Li, the Dean of Faculty of Education (FED), with the other two colleagues, were invited to attend the forum.

Registrar Li has given a keynote speech on the forum with the topic of "Core Competencies and their Development: University's Problems and Challenges". In his speech, he pointed out that core competencies can be defined as the key abilities and skills for people to adapt to the social changes and challenges in the 21st century. How to cultivate students' core competencies in primary and secondary schools as well as in universities has become a hot topic in the global education community. Registrar Li brought into attention several factors that prevent the development of students’ core competencies such as, the lack of clear university mission and vision, the imbalanced work on general education and professional education, the focus more on research than on teaching. In response to these common problems, Registrar Li shared his experiences and solutions with the audiences. The speech aroused a positive and heated discussion among the participants.

In this forum, the experts and scholars from across-strait four-regions have had good discussions and shared good practices on the core competence development and education reform.