******************************************************
The Secretary for Education, Mr Michael Suen, said today (November 28) at the "Knowledge Fair 2009 – English Language and Subject Learning" that the Education Bureau (EDB) will support teachers with full range of comprehensive professional development programmes, and will actively consider how to improve their capacity, through existing measures, to implement their school-based medium of instruction (MOI) arrangements to enhance students' English proficiency.
The Knowledge Fair 2009 was attended by several hundreds of school principals and teachers, with 14 schools sharing their experience in teaching. It is organised by EDB at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University.
Mr John Polias, who had supported a number of schools in using the English medium to teach content subjects, gave a keynote speech on "Improving Schooling through Understanding the Role of Language in Learning". He also shared with teachers his experience in supporting schools in cross-curricular projects. Today's workshop also included 14 sharing sessions covering seven themes and good practices to meet the needs of teachers from schools of different developmental stages.
Mr Suen stressed, "I am pleased to learn that most schools have made good use of the flexibility of the fine-tuning to choose their diversified MOI arrangements, having regard to the needs of students and the circumstances of their schools. These include teaching different classes, groups or subjects in Chinese or English, or adopting various extended learning activities in English under the mother-tongue teaching."
Mr Suen hoped that schools will live up to the spirit of the fine-tuning to implement MOI arrangements progressively to increase students' opportunities to expose to and use English at junior secondary levels. This will facilitate students' transition to the use of the medium at senior secondary levels.
He reiterated that with the implementation of the fine-tuned arrangements starting from Secondary One in the 2010/11 school year, schools will no longer be classified into "Chinese-medium" schools and "English-medium" schools.
He added that it is the consensus among schools that they will explain to parents detailed school-based MOI arrangements in a professional manner. At tandem with the issue of the Secondary School Profiles in December, EDB will conduct a series of parents' briefing sessions on the Secondary School Places Allocation System to facilitate their selection of schools. Experts in parenting as well as school heads will be invited to advise on how to choose schools for their children in the light of the fine-tuned MOI arrangements at junior secondary levels.
He said that EDB will continue to provide teachers with support to implement their school-based MOI arrangements. This includes a series of wide-ranging professional training courses for teachers scheduled for next March or April and the provision of supply teachers. In addition, a large-scale longitudinal study will be conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of various school-based MOI arrangements and to develop effective teaching resources.
Ends/Saturday, November 28, 2009
Issued at HKT 13:53
NNNN
