Whole-school Language Policy:
Junior form students are assigned to English enrichment classes according to their English levels, to ensure they effectively learn and enjoy learning in English. A pleasurable English-rich environment motivates students to learn and use English inside and outside of class.

Learning and Teaching Strategies:
The school works to instill in students a passion for learning, self-motivation, critical thinking, creativity and pursuit of excellence. Students may enroll in Arts, Science as well as Business subjects for broad and balanced scope of knowledge. Reading lessons in junior forms equip students with nonfiction reading strategies. Classroom teaching aims to help students learn how to learn and cultivate a love of learning. Students develop generic skills and a desire to learn, and fulfil their potentials through structured classroom and co- and extra-curricular learning experiences. With the ever improving student qualities, the school actively promotes self-directed learning through the acquisition of study habits such as doing lesson preparation and note-taking strategies. The school organizes enriched and accelerated pull-out programmes in different domains to cater for the learning needs of the gifted learners or high achievers. The school equips students with comprehensive learning strategies and provides a rich English environment, in which both teachers and students can use the language to teach, learn and communicate. Subject collaboration enables students at different levels to achieve effective and progressive improvement in their learning, and collaborative teaching is much encouraged to enhance learning and teaching effectiveness.

School-based curriculum:
1. Electives: 3X. 3 Electives.
2. Curriculum highlights: S.4 - S.5 Life and Values Education; S.3 Business Fundamentals; S.1 - S.3 Nonfiction Reading Programme; S.1 - S.2 English Phonics, Phonetics & Spelling Programme

Development of the Four Key Tasks:
Moral and civic education is delivered through internal and external means. Morning assemblies, weekly assemblies, multi-cultural exchange programs, and current affairs forums are some of the ways to expose students to issues in daily lives and in society, through which they build their cultural and national identities. Diverse and effective whole-school reading schemes and activities have fostered a strong reading culture. Our reading promotion activities include Exploring a New Horizons Reading Award Scheme, Parent-Child Reading Competition, Story Sharing Corner, and also Nonfiction Reading Lessons that integrate reading and writing. Three of our English teaching practices are among the 15 Exemplars of Good Practices commended by the Education Bureau, and one of them is on our whole-school approach to the promotion of reading.

Life Planning Education:
Believing that each student has their own interests, abilities and orientations and realizing that there are multiple study pathways after they graduate, we implement individual student planning, ensuring each student receives career guidance from an advisor in the last two years of their secondary schooling. The objectives are to help our students understand their career/academic aspirations, make informed choices on their career/learning goals, and review their academic performance, achievements and other factors in relation to their career/educational pursuits.

In Secondary 5, there is the student personal development support programme, which includes identifying students’ career inclination, team building, drafting of the self-account, and making preliminary programme choices. S6 transition talks prepare students for various university applications.

Individual student planning will be made much more successful with a career and guidance curriculum in place starting from the junior forms. So Finding Colours of Your Life and Career Mapping are built into our junior and senior curricula respectively. Class teachers conduct class teacher periods on career and life planning. To empower the class teachers and career teachers, school-based training for teachers on life planning education and career guidance is conducted every year. The Career Week also serves as a hidden curriculum exposing students to the world of work and further studies.

Details: http://www.carmelss.edu.hk/site/learning-teaching/curriculum/