‘Equity and Quality’ is an emerging terminol-ogy that focuses on the quality of education rather than on‘excellence’. The global policy discourse is turningtowards levelling up educational qualityfor all. TheOrganization for Economic Cooperation and Development(OECD) 2012 report entitledEquity and Quality in Edu-cation: Supporting Disadvantaged Students and Schoolsclaimed that the highest performing education systems(HPES) across OECD countries are those that combinehigh quality and equity. In such education systems, the vastmajority of students can attain high level skills andknowledge that depend on their ability and drive, morethan on their socio-economic background. Paradoxically,among the HPES are three East Asian systems—China,Hong Kong and Singapore—characterized by a hugeincome disparity between the rich and the poor with theirabove-40 Gini indices. Nevertheless, their high averagescores in PISA 2009 illustrate that the average quality ofeducation in respect to learning outcomes provided in theseeducation systems are of a very high quality which benefitsthe whole population regardless of the socio-economicconditions of the students. How can these seemingly con-tradictory claims and evidences be explained? Can edu-cational equity and quality co-exist within a highly unequalsociety? This article attempts to offer some explanationstaking Hong Kong as an illustrative case. EmployingBourdieu’s logic of practice, the article argues that bothcultural habitus and structural contexts account for theachievement, albeit contested, of educational equity andquality in Hong Kong.

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• The Issue of Equity and Quality of Education in Hong Kong