No student is unteachable if the right method is used

We are Above & Beyond Education.

Above & Beyond Education is the first social enterprise dedicated to promoting positive education and social-emotional learning in particular for low-income families in Hong Kong. We believe that "no student is unteachable if the right method is used". Integrating evidence-based "positive education" and “social-emotional learning” into students' life, we aim to develop children's self-efficacy, positive emotions, resilience, and character strengths. We are also dedicated to promoting positive parenting in order to build up happy families and ultimately a happy community.

Our Missions and Visions

As our English and Chinese names suggest, Above and Beyond Education aims to provide more than just education. We hope to bring happiness to students, parents, schools, and the community through education.

Learning is like a scoop of ice-cream. It is sweet, always our favourite, and will cheer us up. Our role is to develop kids’ capacity to be happy and love so that they can spread joy to the whole community.

Ultimately, we hope to redefine the purpose of education, emphasizing the joy of learning, developing students’ unique character strengths, while combining academic studies with life education.

Our Principles.

The purpose of education is to nurture competence, virtue and a flourishing life. Conventional education focuses on accomplishment, which creates stress and frustration for both students and their parents.

A good education is about much more than getting good grades in order to get into a university. It’s about preparing today’s children to solve tomorrow’s problems.

Our work is built on the best practices of positive education and social-emotional learning programmes from overseas and localised for the general public, in particular underprivileged families through a sustainable, social enterprise model.

Our Team

Founder and Director : Rita Ching

Rita Ching is the Founder and Director of Above and Beyond Education, as well as the Principal Adviser of The Women’s Foundation (a charitable organisation) after stepping down from her previous role as Deputy CEO. She holds a Master’s in Social Policy from the University of York and a Postgraduate Diploma in Human Resource Management and Training from the University of Leicester, both based in the UK. She continued her professional development and overseas training in Positive Education at the Institute of Positive Education in Australia, Social-Emotional Learning at the University of California Berkeley and Responsive Classroom®, Mindful Self Compassion instructed by Dr Kristin Neff and Dr Chris Germer in the US, as well as Positive Neuroplasticity instructed by Dr Rick Hanson. She is also a certified Mindfulness Teacher of MindBe Education and Mindfulness in School Projects, as well as a Zentangle Teacher. Prior to joining TWF for over ten years, Rita served at the Employee Retraining Board including a year of Secondment to the Education Bureau where she successfully launched a promotional series for the new culture of education and produced the well-known promotion video “Learning is not Scoring”. Rita was an External Advisor for the Higher Diploma of Public Policy and Administration Course and Yi Jin Diploma Course for the School of Continuing Education at the Hong Kong Baptist University, an organizing member of the Family-Friendly Employers Award Scheme of the Family Council, and the Convenor of the Advisory Group for the Financial Education for Working Adults under the Investor and Financial Education Council, a subsidiary of the Securities & Futures Commission. She was also a member of the Programme Committee of the Children’s Medical Foundation, and a blogger on local media of HK01 and Ohmykids. She was awarded “Hong Kong Outstanding Women Volunteer” of Hong Kong YWCA in 2015. She always delivers talks and workshops to local parents, schools and corporates and had also given talks in Taiwan and United Nations.

Advisor: Christine Mak, Clinical Psychologist

Christine Mak is a seasoned clinical psychologist and has been awarded the Chief Executive’s Commendation for Community Service by the HKSAR Government. She practised as a Corporate Clinical Psychologist in the Head Office of Hospital Authority for more than 10 years and served as a Fractional Senior Counsellor and Lecturer of the Department of Applied Social Studies of the City University of Hong Kong. She has been actively involved in research and development projects on positive psychology and has provided psychological training to schools, public organisations and government departments.