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The Administration remains fully committed to the promotion of mother-tongue teaching, the Chief Executive, Mr Tung Chee Hwa, said.

Delivering his second Policy Address in the Legislative Council today (Wednesday), he said that expert opinion worldwide opined that students learnt best in their mother tongue and that the Administration was committed to improving the ability of students to use Chinese and English.

To help Chinese medium schools improve their teaching of English, the Administration was providing up to four additional English language teachers for each school, of whom a maximum of two might be native-speaking English teachers, giving schools additional recurrent grants for English language teaching materials and library books; and giving priority to Chinese medium schools in the provision of multi-media learning centres.

Mr Tung noted that the implementation of the mother-tongue learning initiative had caused some concern in the community.

While the Administration would continue to adhere to the principles behind this initiative, he added that it had undertaken to review progress within three years to examine further how to promote mother-tongue teaching and improve students' ability in the use of both languages.

On further promotion of the use of information technology (IT) in education, Mr Tung said that the Administration had in the coming year earmarked funds totalling $630 million.

The funds are to be used to provide more IT training for teachers, supply technical back-up to help schools manage their newly-acquired IT facilities and employ some 250 IT co-ordinators to help public sector schools develop and implement their IT-based initiatives.

"We are determined to ensure that in implementing this initiative we achieve the aim of integrating the use of IT with our education system for the benefit of teachers and pupils alike," Mr Tung added.

End/Wednesday, October 7, 1998

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