Sha Tin Methodist College (), abbreviated as STMC, is a government-subsidised secondary school founded in 1983; it is sponsored by the Methodist Church, Hong Kong to serve the local community together with churches and service centres in Sha Tin parish.
School features
Class structure and admission
The school has adopted a symmetrical class structure. There are five classes in each form for F.1 to F.5, and three classes for F.6 and F.7. There are no school places in F.4 and F.6 allocated to students from other schools.
School Philosophy and Aims
Based on the spirit of Jesus Christ, and putting whole-person caring as our top priority, the school aims to provide education on spiritual, moral, intellectual, physical, social and aesthetic aspects, which helps students build a personality in the image of Christ and in the end, to serve people and the society.
Teacher qualifications
The school currently has 68 teachers, of which 66 (97%) hold university degrees; 25 (37.3%) hold higher degrees; 63 (93%) have completed teacher training programs. Education psychologist and social worker are also employed to support the school's work. All teachers in the school are eager to enrich themselves by further study and regular sharing. Classroom observation has long been practised in the school. Moreover, all teachers of English Language and Putonghua have met the requirements of the Language Proficiency Assessment.
Religious education
The school practices Christian education. The school actively promotes education on Christianity through classes on religious education, morning assembly, weekly assembly, Christian fellowship, Girl's Brigade, gospel camp, sports events, cell groups, prayer groups and crusade. The Shatin Methodist Church works closely with the school on holding various activities and camps to nurture students' spirituality and leadership. Youth music worship is held every Saturday.
Education
Since the implementation of School Management Initiative in 1992, the school has been drawing up plans according to the school administration cycle. Representatives of teachers, parents, alumni and local community are among the school managers.
The school received funding from the Government's Quality Education Fund on a number of creative education projects. These include: Green School Campaign, Multi-media Language Lab, Chinese Orchestra, Western Orchestra, General Education on Chinese Medicine, Digital Music and Creative Art Workshop, Millennium Multi-media Classrooms, General Education on Chinese Medicine and Resource Centre, Campus TV, to provide a platform for enhancing teaching effectiveness. With the support from the SAR Government, the Church and the community, the school has in recent years organised study tours to Beijing, Sichuan, Yunnan, Sanshui, Lianshan, Zhaoqing, Xian and Macau, Singapore as well as to Korea. To tie in with the objective of broadening horizons, the school has set up a student grant on overseas studies, so that all students have the opportunity to enrich their learning experience.
A number of seed programmes have been carried out in collaboration with the Curriculum Development Institute of EDB in recent years, with a view to introducing curriculum that enriches learning experience. A number of teachers have been seconded to EDB to take part in the development and optimisation of the curriculum on Gifted Education, Science Education, History Education, Integrated Humanities and Liberal Studies. The curriculum so developed was implemented in the school and the experience applied to other schools in Hong Kong.
In addition, the curriculum on Integrated Humanities at HKCEE level has been implemented in the school since 2003. A number of electives are available at senior secondary level, and AS level subjects of Liberal Studies, Computer Application, Mathematics and Statistics are offered to broaden students' horizons.
Apart from general subjects, the school implemented a formal curriculum on Moral and Civic Education to nurture civic awareness among students. Culture experiential activities and reading day are organised from time to time. The school also set up the first Chinese Herbal Medicine Learning Center in Hong Kong to provide learning opportunities in Chinese herbal medicine. A curriculum of general education on Chinese Medicine is incorporated in regular classes in F.2.