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Following is a transcript of remarks by the Secretary for Education, Mr Eddie Ng Hak-kim, at a media session after attending Commercial Radio's progamme "Saturday Forum" today (March 2):
Reporter:...... incentives that you give to students hoping they come back to teach in the future as a life-long career...... any penalty system in place......?
Secretary for Education: Thank you very much for the very important question. What happen is, and then with the selection criteria, with the preferred subject areas highlighted transparently, and then with the programme in place, and no matter how many years to begin with, the person when comes back will have to take at least a two-year teaching position. If the course taken would be three years, the person has to stay for three years. If for whatever reason, the person cannot honour the commitment, then payment has to be made back to the system. This is one of the important parts because it is public money. We want to make sure it is being used properly and governed properly.
Reporter: How can you make sure that they will turn up to be......?
Secretary for Education: Of course, there are lots of variety of attraction for side-tracking, re-directing and re-routing. However, we believe that since so many options are already available for the high performing students, if they really want to choose this particular area, and after really getting into it by actual work experience, the chances to retain (them) would be a lot higher. Other than that, you are just triggering me on thinking of one additional thing we have in mind. That is, it is not just a matter of money, posts, you go there, get the money, get trained and come back and teach for a couple of years and so on. It's more than that. We would like to launch a little bit different procedure in this area, by instilling, I would be suggesting and considering additional measures, that is, talent management system. Making sure they are involved. Making sure they are involved while they are studying overseas, so that they know what's going on particularly in the area of education in Hong Kong. Get them involved in some of the projects over the summer time and so on. So that they know what's going on. They know what they are wanted. They know what they can do and they know how to contribute. If you look at the worldwide experience of talent management, once they know how does that work, how can I contribute, do I have a future, chances for them to stay would be a lot higher. This is the soft side of managing their commitment from these targeted scholarships. Thank you very much.
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)
Ends/Saturday, March 2, 2013
Issued at HKT 18:23
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