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The Secretary for Education, Mr Michael Suen, today (September 1) wrote to the principals and teachers of all secondary schools, primary schools and kindergartens on the first school day of the new school year. In the letters, Mr Suen said education was a mammoth task and education reform would take time. He used the saying, "when people are of one mind and heart, they can move Mountain Tai".
Mr Suen encouraged members of the education sector to stand by their convictions and harness their efforts to foster students' learning and personal growth, and to nurture the younger generation to be proficient in both Chinese and English, as well as knowledgeable, creative and confident.
"Starting this year, public sector primary schools are, where circumstances permit, allowed to implement small class teaching (SCT) in phases, starting from Primary One and extending progressively to Primary Six. This initiative marks a new chapter in the development of basic education," he said.
He added that the New Senior Secondary Academic Structure (NSS), which had been under development for years, would begin this school year. The New Academic Structure upheld the aims of basic education to promote students' whole-person development and life-long learning. It also offered a broad, balanced and diversified curriculum to enable students to build an extensive knowledge base, to become biliterate and trilingual, to develop their learning-to-learn capabilities, and to nurture their creativity, critical thinking, communication skills as well as positive values and attitudes.
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"I am confident that our students will benefit from the education reform, and that the New Academic Structure will have a profound impact on the community as a whole," he said.
"To help teachers and principals implement the NSS curriculum, we have carefully considered the opinions and suggestions of various stakeholders in order to provide appropriate resources and support for schools and teachers.
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"We encourage schools to flexibly use the NSS-related grants to provide students with a diversified senior secondary curriculum," he said.
"The Education Bureau will also continue to provide schools and teachers with a variety of professional development programmes, professional support and diversified learning and teaching resources, including learning packages, exemplars and online resources."
Mr Suen also mentioned in the letters that the Education Bureau had announced the fine-tuning of the medium of instruction (MOI) for secondary schools starting from the 2010/11 school year at Secondary One level. The objective of the fine-tuning is to give schools more room for development to increase students' opportunities to be exposed to and use English at junior secondary levels, taking into account students' ability and school-based circumstances, thus developing more strategically their ability to learn in both Chinese and English. This was to tie in with the implementation of the NSS Academic Structure and to realise the goal of enabling students to learn how to learn and become life-long learners.
Mr Suen said he believed that schools would devise student-centred MOI plans to meet their students' needs.
"I anticipate that schools will be making judgements in a professional and prudent manner, while upholding the spirit of school-based accountability by giving thorough explanations on their MOI arrangements to ensure that parents and students have a clear understanding of them.
"For primary schools, we have set aside $218 million over a six-year period beginning the 2009/10 financial year to provide schools with diversified on-going professional development activities in support of SCT. In-service training programmes for teachers have already been rolled out and in view of the enthusiastic response from teachers, we will continue to organise more programmes for them from October this year."
Mr Suen said, "We will make every effort to help principals and teachers make good use of the edge brought by SCT to improve learning and teaching in primary schools."
The Education Bureau also started providing about 700 additional teaching posts in the 2008/09 school year on a time-limited basis for schools to draw up school-based implementation plans for SCT.
For schools maintaining the class size at 30, the bureau had also provided additional teachers. This was an interim arrangement to improve learning and teaching before their transition to SCT.
To further improve the teaching of English in primary schools, the bureau had also allocated additional resources, including establishing a scholarship to attract young talent to pursue a career in education, strengthening school-based support and providing professional training for teachers to create a better English environment which will, in turn, support the fine-tuning of MOI at junior secondary levels.
Mr Suen also wrote to kindergarten headmasters and teachers to show that the Education Bureau attached great importance to the healthy growth and learning experiences of young children.
Mr Suen said, "In the 2007/08 school year, the Government introduced the Pre-primary Education Voucher Scheme (PEVS) to further improve pre-primary education through direct fee subsidy to parents and subsidy to principals and teachers for their professional development."
The PEVS has been implemented for two years. More than 80% of kindergartens have participated in the scheme and 85% of kindergarten pupils were benefiting from the fee subsidy. The level of fee subsidy has been increased to $12,000 per year in this school year and would be progressively increased to $16,000 per year in the 2011/12 school year.
"Starting from this school year, we will reinstate the annual adjustment mechanism for the fee remission ceilings under the Fee Remission Scheme to provide greater choices for needy families in selecting kindergartens," Mr Suen added.
"I am also delighted to see that our frontline kindergarten teachers have made good use of the Teacher Development Subsidy embedded in the voucher for professional upgrading. We will begin a review of the PEVS later this year. We will fully consult the sector, and hope that through co-operation among schools, families and the society, children will grow up healthily and happily," he said.
Mr Suen also reminded schools that they should remain vigilant in guarding against human swine influenza. He called on education frontline colleagues to continue to follow the measures recommended in the letter issued by the bureau on the arrangements for the new school year and the latest guidelines provided by the Centre for Health Protection of the Department of Health in order to prevent the spread of influenza and other communicable diseases.
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The letters issued to all kindergartens, primary and secondary schools have been uploaded to the EDB website: (www.edb.gov.hk).
Ends/Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Issued at HKT 12:38
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