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Following is a written reply by the Secretary for Labour and Welfare, Mr Matthew Cheung Kin-chung, to a question by the Hon Mrs Anson Chan on the relaxation of enrolment requirements by the Employees Retraining Board in the Legislative Council today (February 20):
Question:
While the Employees Retraining Board ("ERB") published a Consultative Document on the Future Directions for the Employees Retraining Board in the middle of last month, ERB had, in December last year, relaxed the enrolment requirements for its courses in respect of minimum age (lowered from 30 to 15 years old) and highest education attainment (elevated from below Secondary Three to sub-degree or below). It is reported that 1,200 young people had enrolled in ERB courses in December last year alone, and ERB plans to provide courses at Qualifications Frameworks Levels one to four and make further efforts to seek recognition by tertiary institutions of the credits obtained upon completion of its courses. In this regard, will the Government inform this Council if it knows:
(a) the reasons for ERB not conducting any consultation before relaxing the minimum age and highest education attainment requirements for enrolment; and the reasons for ERB relaxing the age and education attainment requirements for admission prior to the publication of the said Consultative Document, given that the consultation period on the Consultative Document will last from January 24 to March 31 this year;
(b) whether the 1,200 young trainees mentioned above have attended or are attending courses organised by the Vocational Training Council ("VTC") or Labour Department, such as the Youth Pre-employment Training Programme; if so, the titles of the courses, and the number of ERB trainees who have taken or are taking such courses, broken down by course titles;
(c) the progress made by ERB in seeking recognition by tertiary institutions of the credits obtained upon completion of its courses; whether any specific articulation arrangement and implementation timetable have been formulated;
(d) as it is reported that these 1,200 young people were mainly enrolled in courses on property management, hotel, catering and clerical personnel and ERB also plans to launch courses relating to finance and accounting, exhibition, logistics, etc., of the annual numbers of places of similar courses provided by VTC, annual expenditure thus incurred, as well as the service targets of these courses;
(e) whether there are any differences between the higher diploma courses of VTC and those of ERB covering the same subjects in terms of academic qualifications; if there are, of the details; if not, whether it has assessed if there is any duplication of resources; and
(f) as many sub-degree graduates of recent years have encountered difficulties both in moving on to senior year undergraduate articulation courses and in employment, how ERB ensures that those people who have completed its courses, in particular courses at Levels Three and Four, will not encounter the same difficulties; and how ERB ensures that prospective employers will recognise the academic qualifications it awards?
Reply:
Madam President,
(a) There is a pressing need to address the relatively high unemployment rate among young people below 30 and the difficulty of those relatively less educated in adjusting to the changing needs of the manpower market. The eligibility criteria of the Employees Retraining Scheme (ERS) were thus relaxed from December 2007 to cover young people aged between 15 and 29 and those with education level at sub-degree or below. In making the decision, we took into account the views expressed by various stakeholders including employers, training providers and labour unions which generally favoured the relaxation. The relaxation marked the first step in expanding and enhancing the training and retraining services of the Employees Retraining Board (ERB). The consultation document in question covers the more long-term strategic directions of ERB.
(b) As applicants for ERB's existing programmes are not required to provide information on other training programmes they have attended or are attending, ERB does not have such data.
(c) Through provision of training courses ranging from Level One to Level Four of the Qualifications Framework (QF), ERB aims to help the working population attain recognised qualifications and map out the progression ladder such that graduates could continue to pursue life-long learning and rise beyond training programmes offered under the ERS. To this end, ERB will work closely with tertiary institutions in the design of its higher level training programmes and for possible articulation to awards beyond QF Level Four. ERB is also in the process of admitting a number of the continuing education arms of tertiary institutions as its training bodies. There is no fixed time-table for the proposed articulation arrangement as it depends on the progress of discussion with the tertiary institutions and the development of a credit accumulation and transfer system under the QF.
(d)&(e) The Vocational Training Council (VTC) offers Secondary Seven and Secondary Five school leavers a range of Higher Diploma (HD) courses in nine different disciplines (Note 1). Course duration ranges from two to four years depending on the education attainment of the students. At present, VTC provides a total of 33,300 full-time HD places each year, of which 18,200 are funded by the Government's recurrent subvention of $620 million and the remaining 15,100 are run on a self-financed basis.
There is no duplication of resources as ERB does not currently provide any HD courses. As regards new training programmes for the new target groups, ERB will discuss with the relevant stakeholders, including VTC, before introducing such programmes to avoid any duplication.
(f) The programmes under the ERS are basically employment-oriented, market-driven and non-academic. To meet the training needs of those trainees with higher education attainment (e.g. at sub-degree level), ERB will develop more advanced programmes pitched at Levels Three and Four of the QF. ERB will also require all its training programmes to be quality assured for the purpose of uploading onto the impending Qualifications Register (QR), thus gaining recognition under the QF. The registration of ERB programmes in the QR will help the trainees attain recognised qualifications for sustained employment or further progression.
Note 1: The nine disciplines include Applied Science; Business Administration; Child Education and Community Services; Construction; Design, Printing, Textiles and Clothing; Electrical and Electronic Engineering; Hotel, Services and Tourism Studies; Information Technology; and Mechanical, Manufacturing and Industrial Engineering.
Ends/Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Issued at HKT 12:16
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