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Following is the transcript of remarks (English portion) made by the Secretary for Education, Mr Michael Suen, at a media session on further relief measures to stabilise the development of secondary schools this afternoon (September 13):
Secretary for Education: The latest projection shows that there will be a sharp decline in the annual intake of Secondary 1 students in the coming few years. It will fall by 21,500 students from 2009 to 2016, representing a decrease of 28.5%.
We are now unable to make a more accurate assessment of the situation after 2016 because it depends on the number of babies born to Mainland parents who will return to Hong Kong for their secondary schooling.
We are well aware of the importance of maintaining the quality of education and making proper use of public resources while respecting parental choice and minimising the adverse disruption brought on by this unwelcome development.
Our best course of action is to try to contain the situation and maintain a balanced diversity of schools. We also have to address teachers' concerns and do our utmost to ensure the stability of the teaching force so that they can concentrate on their teaching work.
Early this year, we introduced a number of measures to respond to the declining student population, including the Voluntary Optimisation of Class Structure Scheme under which 23 secondary schools have already reduced the number of S1 classes from five to four. We need far more schools to participate in this scheme to make its effect felt.
During preliminary discussions, it has been suggested that secondary schools with inadequate teaching space should reduce the number of classes so as to provide a conducive learning environment. We believe that this would be the best course of action for stakeholders to take.
We understand that it will take time for school sponsoring bodies and various stakeholders to discuss and coordinate future development plans. Therefore, for schools which have enrolled less than 61 students to operate three Secondary 1 classes in the 2010/11 school year, a grace period of one year will be offered to enable them to prepare for their future development.
In the next few months, we will continue to communicate with various stakeholders to come up with other viable development options.
Reporter: … the Professional Teachers' Union and parents will go on strike …
Secretary for Education: I understand their concern. It is understandable that they are worried about the stability of the teaching force and the effect the disruption will bring to the morale of not only the teachers, but the students and also the parents. That is something that we have to grapple with. What we have in mind throughout the discussion during the last week or so and this morning is a consensus I feel emerging that all schools should equally participate in the scheme to reduce the number of S1 classes from more than five to four.
Reporter: What about the small class teaching? They say they want the Government to adopt the small class teaching as a long term strategy?
Secretary for Education: I think that is something which is unrealistic depending how you define small class. Because if you define small classes, really very small classes, at the moment our policy is sufficiently flexible to allow certain schools which did not manage to enroll more than 61 students to three classes to survive by adopting special development options. If we use that as a yardstick, operating three classes with as little as 61 students, that is 20 students per class, so that is really a small class in whatever language you talk about. Our policy at the moment already accommodates this flexibility to suggest that all classes in Hong Kong should be operated on this basis, i.e., at around 20 per class. I think that is asking too much, because the financial strain on the public purse is too much. Because at the moment, if we take an average class of 36 and work out the unit cost to be certain number, if we reduce it to 20, then it is almost doubling the unit cost of a student. And we can't make it sustainable.
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)
Ends/Monday, September 13, 2010
Issued at HKT 18:09
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