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Following is a speech (English only) by the Secretary for Education and Manpower, Mr Joseph W P Wong, at the 13th International Congress for School Effectivenss and Improvement today (Tuesday):
"Meeting the Education Needs of Hong Kong in the New Millennium"
Mr Townsend, Mr Cheng, ladies and gentlemen,
May I first extend a warm welcome to our guests from afar, who have come to Hong Kong to attend this Conference. We are pleased to host the Conference and have such a distinguished gathering of academics, policy makers and educators who will no doubt share their experiences and ideas on how to promote quality and effective education. As the new millenium has just begun a few days ago, it cannot be more timely and opportune to share with you the Hong Kong Administration's views on how we can better nurture and develop Hong Kong's most valuable asset - PEOPLE.
The biggest challenge confronting Hong Kong people in the last two years of the 20th century was facing the impact and managing the consequences of the Asian financial turmoil. Our economy shrank by more than 5 per cent in 1998. Unemployment rate soared to a record 6.3 per cent. Property prices slumped by 50 per cent. Hopefully, there are now signs of recovery. GDP grew positively for the second and third quarters in 1999. Unemployment has moderated in recent months to 6.1 per cent, trade figures have improved, property prices have stabilized and the stock market has rebounded significantly from the trough and indeed reached a new peak on the first trading day of the new millenium.
Meeting Hong Kong's education needs
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The recent economic adjustment is in many ways a blessing in disguise. It reinforces our conviction that we must diversify our economy and promote high-tech, high value-added industries. It is also a timely reminder that our ability to respond to the challenges of the future world depends on how well we can equip our young generation today. In Hong Kong, we firmly believe that the starting point is education. But, what are the education needs of Hong Kong in the new millennium? I would like to highlight five priority areas.
First, our education system must ensure that all our students are information technology (IT) literate, with some of them having the potential to become leaders in the field. This is because IT and the Internet have changed and will continue to change the world in profound ways with lightning speed. We live in an information age which offers immense opportunities. And our students have to learn to embrace them.
Secondly, our education system must nurture our students to develop the aptitude to learn continuously. Our economy has changed from a labour-intensive to a knowledge-based one. The defining feature of a knowledge-based economy is the fast and continuous emergence of new ideas in all sectors which requires us to respond quickly.
Thirdly, our education system must equip our children with good communication skills. The world is becoming increasingly globalised. To exploit the potentials of this trend, we need international citizens who have a global outlook and to appreciate other values and cultures. We therefore want our students to be biliterate i.e. write proper English and Chinese, and trilingual i.e. speak fluent Cantonese, Putonghua and English.
Fourthly, our education system needs a dedicated and professional teaching force. In this respect, I cannot overemphasize the crucial role our teachers play in preparing young people for future challenges. Henry Adams, an American historian, says it well, "A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops."
Finally, there must be flexibility in the education system to promote diversity and excellence, and nurture creativity in our students. The system must allow room for schools and educators to innovate, and to respond to the changing (and often different) demands of parents. It should encourage competition among education providers, and give all stakeholders a proper say in the delivering process.
The importance which the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government attaches to education is best illustrated by the fact that education is the single biggest item of public expenditure. In this financial year, we will be spending HK$55 billion (or US$7 billion) on education, taking up about 20 per cent of total government expenditure. It represents an increase of 8 per cent in real terms over last financial year despite a deficit budget and a forecast economic growth of only 1.8 per cent this year.
I would now like to briefly introduce to you what the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government has done, or has planned to do, to meet our education needs in the new millennium.
IT in education
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The Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, Mr Tung Chee Hwa, has pledged to make Hong Kong "a leader, not a follower, in the information world of tomorrow". As part of our efforts to fulfil this pledge, we have started to implement a five-year strategy on IT in education last year. The four key components of our strategy are to enhance our students' access to IT and the Internet, to provide training and support for all teachers, to use IT to support teaching in the school curriculum, and to foster a community-wide culture which helps promote IT in education. Our goal is to turn our schools into dynamic and innovative learning institutions, and to enable our students to tap into the vast reservoir of knowledge on the information superhighway.
Our universities and tertiary institutions strive to keep themselves in the forefront of IT development. One out of five tertiary students are now studying IT and engineering courses. Institutions have endeavoured to ensure that all tertiary students are immersed in an IT environment, and that all of them have free, ready access to computers and the Internet on campus. All institutions have lecture facilities equipped with computers. Cyber classes are now an emerging trend in universities. Increasing number of web-based programmes are offered. To ensure that our university students are IT competent, all tertiary students are offered mandatory or optional computer courses. Some institutions have set up IT literacy benchmarks to ensure that their graduates will be competent in using IT in their future careers.
We are also improving our IT training in vocational education to equip potential employees for the technologically driven job market. As a first step, we will upgrade the IT infrastructure of technical colleges and institutes under the Vocational Training Council. Courses in information systems and software engineering have also been strengthened to train up IT personnel.
Making Hong Kong a learning society
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In a knowledge-based economy like Hong Kong, the ability of our people to continually learn and upgrade their skills and knowledge is vital to our development and competitiveness. We have been providing ample opportunities for motivated learners at different levels.
At the basic education level, we offer adults part-time courses ranging from primary to senior secondary. On the vocational side, part-time skill upgrading courses are offered by training bodies such as the Vocational Training Council and Construction Industry Training Authority.
At the tertiary level, we have an Open University which is self-financing and which plays an important role in our efforts to promote life-long learning. It has just been granted two major international awards in 1999 for its excellence and achievements in open and distance learning. In addition to local education programmes, many of which are offered by our universities, there are a large number of overseas tertiary institutions offering various education programmes in Hong Kong. These programmes have attracted many people who are keen to equip and upgrade themselves for a better career. As a quality assurance, we have introduced legislation to ensure that these courses are of a standard comparable to those conducted in their home countries. We are also conducting a stocktaking exercise of all existing continuing education courses and course providers to see how to align these courses with our strategy of promoting life-long learning.
We are in the process of developing a comprehensive qualifications framework for the many and different education and training programmes available in Hong Kong so as to provide a continuous education and training ladder for our people.
Improving the language standard of Hong Kong people
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The ability to communicate effectively with people of different nationalities is one of the core competencies of an international citizen in the 21st century. And English is de facto the most common international language.
As an international business, financial and trading centre, we are committed to enhancing the learning and teaching of English. I know that there have been reports which suggest that we are attaching less importance to the learning of English after the reunification with Mainland China. I can assure you that these reports have got the facts completely wrong. The truth is, we are investing much more resources than before in the teaching and learning of English in schools. For instance, over 400 additional native-speaking teachers have been recruited from all over the world to teach English in our secondary schools. Almost all public sector secondary schools now have at least one native English teacher. This scheme is also being piloted in some primary schools. Additional resources are provided to schools to promote the learning of English, such as multi-media learning centres and grants for English books and other related activities.
Chinese is equally important for cultural as well as economic reasons. We have been taking measures to improve our students' standard of Chinese. For example, we have introduced a Chinese Extensive Reading Scheme in all primary and secondary levels. Most Hong Kong people speak Cantonese. But we want our students to master Putonghua as well. Putonghua is now a nine-year core subject from primary to junior secondary level.
We have set up a language fund to help promote innovative and school-based initiatives which would raise students' proficiency in both English and Chinese. The fund supports a variety of projects ranging from research, development of teaching resource materials to student activities. So far, 235 projects, amounting to HK$275 million (or US$35 million), have been funded.
Enhancing the quality of principals and teachers
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Principals and teachers play an important role in education. The role of principals is particularly vital as they exercise instructional and managerial leadership. In order to give schools the required flexibility to meet their own educational targets, and at the same time increase their accountability in relation to performance and results, we will require all schools to practise school-based management this school year. This means that schools would be given greater autonomy in the use of resources, including staffing. They would also have more freedom in designing school-based curriculum and be held more accountable for their performance.
To prepare our principals for this new initiative, we are developing a comprehensive training programme for all principals comprising a broad range of subjects including leadership training, curriculum-related studies, IT, and managing human and financial resources. The training is planned to last for about one year on a part-time basis. To address the actual training requirements of individual principals and to bridge theory and practice, the programme will include the important elements of individual needs assessments and action research. The training programme will also provide valuable opportunities for experience sharing and cross-fertilization amongst principals.
The professional competence of our teachers is equally important. At present, we have both degree graduate and non-graduate teachers in our schools. In his inaugural speech to celebrate the establishment of the HKSAR in July 1997, the Chief Executive announced that in the foreseeable future, all new teachers entering the profession should be degree holders and professionally trained. The Hong Kong Institute of Education, our largest teacher training institution, is already a degree awarding institute. We are progressively upgrading all pre-service training courses provided by the Institute to degree and higher levels. Other tertiary institutions also offer degree courses in education. By 2004, we will have upgraded all the pre-service training programmes for primary and secondary school teachers to degree level.
Of course, teacher training does not and cannot stop at the pre-service level. Teachers need to undergo continuous professional development in order to keep pace with the emergence of new knowledge and new approaches in teaching. Indeed, teachers must be life-long learners themselves and be role models for their students. To enhance teachers' knowledge, improve their language ability and update their methods in teaching, we are in the process of setting benchmarks on language and IT competence for teachers and will require teachers to meet these benchmarks within a specific period. At the same time, we will provide other in-service training opportunities to enhance the professionalism of teachers. For example, we will provide IT training in the next four years, to enable every teacher to take up their new role as facilitators in the learning process. We will also provide language enhancement training in English, Chinese and Putonghua. In the longer term, we aim to establish comprehensive professional development plans and requirements for teachers, so as to guide teachers on their training and development at various stages of their career, and reach out to the less motivated teachers.
Promoting diversity and excellence in the education system
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We believe that there is a need to inject more variety into our education system so as to encourage innovation, promote competition and reward performance. We are taking action in several areas:
* First, we want to facilitate the development of a strong and vibrant private school sector. We have launched a number of measures to facilitate the establishment of private independent schools, including the provision of land grant at nominal premium and capital grant for construction of school premises.
* Secondly, we want to motivate our tertiary institutions to build on their strengths and to develop synergies with other institutions. This is vitally important if Hong Kong is to develop into a regional centre of higher education, and to keep up with the dynamic and competitive global environment. To this end, an Areas of Excellence programme was launched in 1998, under which tertiary institutions may on their own or jointly submit research proposals for funding support. For the first round funding, three proposals on IT, economics and business strategy, and plant and fungal biotechnology have been funded respectively, with a total allocation of $126 million over five years.
* Thirdly, to encourage innovation and self-motivated reform initiated by individual schools, a HK$5 billion (or US$641 million) Quality Education Fund was set up in 1998 to finance worthwhile educational initiatives in schools. More than 1,100 such projects, amounting to HK$585 million (US$75 million) and involving 1,200 schools and 500,000 students have been funded in the past two years. They cover areas such as practising school-based management, applying information technology in teaching and learning, promoting all-round education and conducting researches on quality education.
Reviewing of the education system
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To further improve the quality of education and to respond more effectively to the changing demands of the community, the Education Commission (EC), which advises the Government on all aspects of education policies, has embarked on a review of the education system in Hong Kong to examine how it should develop into the 21st Century. The review will cover the academic structure, the curricula and the assessment mechanisms at various stages of education. The whole review is expected to be completed in the middle of this year.
Conclusion
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In closing, I would like to share with you what Guan Zhong, a statesman in ancient China, once said, "the plan for a year is growing grains; the plan for a decade is planting trees; and the plan for life is nurturing people." Education offers hope, opportunities and progress. It is the best possible endowment for our future generations. Let us all work together for this worthwhile cause.
End/Tuesday, January 4, 2000
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