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Following is the transcript of remarks by the Secretary for Education, Mr Eddie Ng Hak-kim, at a media session today (February 1):
Secretary for Education: The Government fully understands the worries and concerns of parents in the North District that their children may be subject to cross-district allocation of the Primary One school places under the current Primary One Admission (POA) mechanism as a result of the increase in the number of cross-boundary students.
In this connection, the Education Bureau today has decided to launch special measures, after the announcement of POA results in June this year, to help students in the North District who would like to study in the same district. We pledge to increase Primary One school places in the North District in order to accommodate the wishes of these children, i.e. schooling and studying within the same district.
After the announcement of POA results in June this year, students who are residing in the North District but being allocated to a school in the Tai Po school net can seek help from the Education Bureau. We will increase the school places in the North District in order to ensure their needs and their desire to stay within the district for schooling can be entertained.
In the meantime, the Education Bureau will make every effort, working closely with other bureaux and departments, to enhance and enlarge the various transportation channels and cross-boundary channels from the mid-north to the northwest part as well, so that cross-boundary children, if they want to come in to study, have other provisions in the northwest or western part of the New Territories as well, and we are working very hard on that one.
The Education Bureau will continue to work and liaise closely with other bureaux, and particularly the schools in the school nets in order to make all these things happen.
Reporter: Can you please give us an estimate on how many places you will be able to increase?
Secretary for Education: If you look at the whole POA, the Primary One Admission mechanism, there are two parts of it. Part one is for all the schools to process self-invited students. That is part one and is done already. Part two will be the Central Allocation and the deadline has just passed. We are processing a lot of those entries right now and those will take time because each student, each application, will have about three choices to begin with. So we are processing this one and it is a little bit difficult to say how many of them at this moment of time. And we've already committed to have the results announced around the June time frame, so that is the one. However, we believe that, given the experience we had in the last year or two, we should be able to entertain all the objectives we've highlighted within the time frame.
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript of remarks.)
Ends/Friday, February 1, 2013
Issued at HKT 20:38
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