****************************
Following is the transcript of remarks by the Secretary for Education, Mr Eddie Ng Hak-kim, after attending the Data Speaks: Lessons from Large-scale Educational Data Surveys for Educational Policy Reform and School Improvement International Conference at the Chinese University of Hong Kong today (January 31):
Reporter: How can the Education Bureau ensure that there are enough school places for cross-border students?
Secretary for Education: We recognise that there might be temporary ups and downs of the population of a relevant age group of students. Therefore, we have been using different devices and measures to address that on the short-term basis. For example, we have a time-limited new school premises converted, redeployed, in order to provide six to nine years of extra places. We might expand, increase the number of classes of a particular school which might have unused classrooms. We might actually have an additional number of students to be assigned, to be allocated to different schools in order to temporarily increase the number of places in a class. All these are temporary measures according to the special needs of individual groups. The purpose is to make sure that, as it is also our policy, every relevant age group student will have a place to study.
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)
Ends/Saturday, January 31, 2015
Issued at HKT 13:10
NNNN