In Britain, an HMI is a government inspector of schools: His Majesty’s Inspector, or Her Majesty’s Inspector when the queen was on the throne. The H follows whoever is king or queen; since King Charles III, official language says His. HMIs work for Ofsted, the office that checks whether schools in England are doing a proper job. They visit, sit in on lessons, talk to teachers and students, then write reports about the teaching, the lessons, and the general character of the school — whether it feels safe, lively, tired, strict, kind. This is a very British, very official title. You will not meet an HMI in a Taiwanese school; our inspectors belong to a different system. Though actually, the same three letters mean something completely different in factories and software: a Human–Machine Interface, the screen a person uses to control a machine. That is not this entry, but it is the HMI many engineering students meet first, so the British school meaning can feel like a trick when it turns up in UK news.

英國皇家督學（英國 Ofsted 派去學校視察的官員；不是台灣的督學）