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The Education and Manpower Bureau is seeing the benefits of a review and reform of the school educational television (ETV) service which now not only provides a better service to schools but also boasts a higher utilisation rates for its programmes.

"According to the 2004 School ETV Survey commissioned by the bureau and conducted by an independent body, the utilisation rates of the primary school programmes have risen from 71% to 72% and then to 77% for three consecutive years from 2001-02 to 2003-04. The rise was probably due to improvements to content and delivery of ETV," a bureau spokesman said today (January 5).

"The service has also been extended to pre-primary, providing educational programmes to help young children learn.

"The new productions are no longer confined to key academic subjects but will cover other subjects such as physical education, art and information technology," the spokesman said. "More emphasis will be placed on cultivating values and developing language skills. New programmes will be produced on moral and civic education, social and analytical skills, English language for the workplace and daily use, communicating in Putonghua, etc."

In mid-2003, the Standing Committee on the Development of the Educational Television Service, on completion of the review on the school ETV service, recommended a number of improvement measures. On production planning, it proposed using questionnaires to gauge the views of teachers and produce programmes to meet their needs. Cases in point include new programmes on moral and civic education and social skills.

"Today school ETV programmes are provided to schools on VCDs or CD-ROMs and through the Internet," the spokesman said. "The EMB also plans to make available the programmes for sale in the market."

"School ETV will also reduce the frequency of repeat broadcast of its programmes and diversify its content by incorporating other educational programmes produced by government departments (for example, RTHK) or other sources."

"To further improve the cost effectiveness, the bureau will change its role from programme production and design to monitoring and quality assurance. Together with outsourcing of production work, the move will bring in more creative ideas and help reduce production cost."

To support ETV's future development, with effect from this month (January 2005) the bureau will re-organise the Standing Committee into two programme development committees, one for pre-primary and primary service and one for secondary, to advise on future production and development.

"In view of the imminent reform of the academic structure for senior secondary education, part of the resources will be redirected towards producing support materials for senior secondary on new subjects and learning approaches," the spokesman said.

"For more diversity of contents, some of these materials may be sourced from overseas or Mainland China and adapted for local use. We also envisage a shift from the television programme format towards multimedia."

More information about the findings of the 2004 ETV survey can be found on the ETV web site of the EMB (http://etv.emb.gov.hk).

Ends/Wednesday, January 5, 2005

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