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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 "Light Up Our Future Stars" ceremony today (March 25):
Reporter: Can you guarantee that no (secondary) school will be closed and no teacher will be laid off in this transition period?
Secretary for Education: As I said, the important thing for the whole arrangement for these three-year (measures) ... Our primary objective is to protect the capacity in schools. That is the first one. The second one relates to the worries about sort of the redundancy of teachers as well as the closure of schools. Since we have seen and interpreted the population trend, first of all, these few years will be dropping drastically. But then after the following few years, the population will go back up, and back to a level even higher than two years ago. We have every intention to keep every school. Therefore, the sort of school closure is not on our agenda at all.
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)
Ends/Tuesday, March 25, 2014
Issued at HKT 17:19
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