The High Court yesterday ruled in favour of the government in a judicial review initiated by the Hong Kong Catholic Church, which accused a school-based management law of jeopardizing its autonomy over operation of Catholic schools and of violating the Basic Law.

In handing down the judgement, Justice Andrew Cheung said education institutions do not enjoy absolute autonomy.

Justice Cheung, however, said that the church would still hold a majority in the IMCs and that they were still entitled to set the vision and mission for the schools.

He also ruled that education institutions' autonomy should be subject to government policies.

"The government, which provides huge funding to aided schools, has a right to regulate the management of aided schools for the purpose of accountability. Autonomy cannot therefore be an absolute right," he ruled.

He said more than half of the aided schools in Hong Kong would be immune from whatever educational policies that the government might formulate if the church's argument was valid.

He said the requirement of establishing IMCs was not an introduction of a brand new system as alleged by the church and did not depart fundamentally from the previous educational system.

The church leader, Cardinal Joseph Zen, had once said that it would stop running its 90 schools should it lose the court case.

But the Catholic Education Office statement issued yesterday said they would continue to serve students and maintain the traditional spirit of Catholic education.

The chairman of the primary section of Hong Kong Catholic Diocesan Schools' Council said the church would study the judgement before deciding whether to appeal.

But he said they would continue running the schools and would establish the incorporated management committee as required by the law.

The dispute between the government and the church could be traced back to 2004, when the government introduced a bill that all aided schools should establish incorporated management committees (IMC).

The school sponsoring bodies could only appoint 60 per cent of IMC members, and the remaining members should be other stakeholders with at least one parent representative. The sponsoring bodies could appoint all management committee members before the bill was introduced.

The bill was passed by the Legislative Council on July 8, 2004, and schools were required to hand in the constitution for establishing the IMCs to the government by July 1, 2009.

The church, launching the judicial review last year, argued that the law would lessen the religious element of schools and it violated the provisions of Basic Law, which stipulated that religious group could continue running schools according to "previous practice" after the handover and schools could retain autonomy.

Li: Put this behind us

Secretary for Education and Manpower Arthur Li welcomed the ruling and pledged the government would work with the church to improve education.

"I hope that we can put this behind us and put our resources into education rather than unnecessarily into court cases and legal fees," he said.

Welcoming the judgement, Li praised the church for being committed to education and hoped that it would continue its practice.

Bureau statistics showed that 160 primary and secondary schools had established the IMCs, and 50 had handed in the constitution for such a committee. Some 100 schools would establish the committees this school year.

Despite saying it would continue serving student, the church maintained that the law would unavoidably introduce political lobbying to and cause tension in the policy-making body of each school, affecting the harmonious consultative and consensus-building mode of school management.

"In other words, decision-making on important school issues in the future will be based less likely on clear, firm and shared education principles, but mainly the result of contests or compromise among representatives of differing beliefs and interests," its statement said.

Apart from the Catholic Church, Christian group Sheung Kung Hui and Methodist Church, also had reservation about the law.

"We have a history of 150 years and we have been close partner with the government. But our relationship is damaged because the government ignores our views," said Sheng Kung Hui education secretary Timothy Ha.

The Federation of Incorporated Management Committees of Hong Kong Schools welcomed the judgement, saying the law would benefit schools.