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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 opening cum flag presentation ceremony of a Mainland exchange programme jointly organised by Hong Kong Youths Unified Association and Kowloon Region School Heads Association today (June 27):
Reporter: Will the Education Bureau consider to cancel the TSA (Territory-wide System Assessment) and why?
Secretary for Education: I have to clarify a couple of points. Indeed, a lot of advanced countries like Australia, Canada, the US also have similar systems in place. We need to understand the real objectives and practices of TSA. First of all, it is for basic learning assessment. It is a territory-wide, systematic assessment. There is no differentiation, no identification of individual students' performance. In April 2014, we took away the score card of individual schools so that there are no more competitions among the schools. All these are based on the idea of helping the learning and teaching for good references at Primary 3, Primary 6 and Secondary 3. Let me emphasise this: there is no need, and you cannot put a lot of pressure on specific exercises. You just cannot do it. It is for basic assessment.
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)
Ends/Saturday, June 27, 2015
Issued at HKT 14:21
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