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Following is the transcript of remarks by the Secretary for Education, Mr Eddie Ng Hak-kim, at a media session after officiating at the Privacy Awareness Week 2014 Inauguration Ceremony cum Student Ambassador for Privacy Protection Programme Award Presentation today (May 4):
Reporter: Do you think it is unfair that some schools are hiring teachers with Mandarin as their first/mother language?
Secretary for Education: As I said, there are a lot of Hong Kong local people who actually have Putonghua/Mandarin as their mother tongue. The key thing here is to ensure that they comply with the local teacher education institute's training and qualification process. As long as they comply with the local requirement, in particular professional standard, capability and competence to teach, the others will be particularly for the direct subsidy school system that they would have certain autonomy in hiring teachers. As I said that particular question, I would leave it to the specific school to respond.
Reporter: Could you explain and talk about the land issue with kindergartens?
Secretary for Education: I understand that this suggestion is about sort of designated places in building new public or private housing (estates) as a requirement for specific purpose for kindergarten education. As I said earlier, indeed what we are doing today has something similar in practices. For all the public housing estates, as well as the private housing estates, according to the needs for kindergarten education, there would be requirements for the specific provision of venue for that purpose. Definitely, that has been designated for kindergarten education. So not that it is not there, it has been the practice.
The second one is whether it should be on the ground floor or the podium floor, or the second or the third floor. As the Education Ordinance and for the specific sector's requirement, we prefer that to be on the ground floor or the first floor of the podium for reasons of convenience and safety and so on for children. If the students with specific needs that are reflected by the school's request, they can talk to the Education Bureau. We will be more than happy to review individual cases.
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)
Ends/Sunday, May 4, 2014
Issued at HKT 18:20
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