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The Government announced today (July 4) that the Chief Executive in Council decided to abolish the Academic Aptitude Test (AAT) with effect from the 2000-01 school year starting from this September.

The Secretary for Education and Manpower, Mrs Fanny Law, said: "In view of the general public support for abolishing the AAT as soon as possible, the Government decided to accept the recommendation of the Education Commission (EC) to abolish the test from the 2000-01 school year."

The AAT was introduced 22 years ago as a scaling tool to moderate the differences in standards among primary schools. It is a reasoning test for which preparation of students is not considered to be necessary. However, as the AAT is a high-stake test which affects the allocation of secondary school places, excessive drilling occurs which takes up an inordinate amount of learning time of primary five and six students.

With nine years of free and universal education, every primary student is guaranteed a junior secondary school place. Strictly speaking, there is no need for a high-stake selective public examination for the purpose of secondary school place allocation.

Mrs Law said: "The abolition of the AAT will provide schools and teachers with more space to focus on the all-round development of students, such as cultivating students' interest in learning and consolidating their linguistic and numerical skills.

"Concerning the replacement mechanism for allocating secondary school places, the public generally consider the EC's proposed interim mechanism acceptable. The Government, therefore, agrees that in the 2000-01 school year, basically the average of each school's AAT results in the past three years should be used to scale students' school internal results for allocating secondary school places.

"Nevertheless, we would like to gather more public views on the details of the transitional mechanism, including whether the number of allocation bands should be reduced to three in the 2000-01 school year; the percentage of discretionary places; the duration of the transitional period; and the arrangement for new schools, etc, up to the completion of the whole consultation exercise before taking the final decision.

"To assist schools in reducing the workload of teachers so that they can concentrate on developing the curriculum, enhancing the language standards of students and coping with diverse student abilities, the Government plans to seek approval of the Finance Committee of the Legislative Council for allocating to primary and secondary schools in the form of a block grant about $500 million out of the $800 million set aside in the 2000-01 budget for implementing the education reform.

"Schools could use the money to employ additional personnel or hire outside services according to their needs and circumstances to reduce the workload of teachers and provide them with more rooms to enhance the effectiveness of teaching and learning," she added

The EC will continue to consult the public on the Secondary School Places Allocation mechanism as well as other proposals for education reform. The public are encouraged to submit their views to the EC before the close of consultation on July 31.

End/Tuesday, July 4, 2000

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