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The Secretary for Education, Mr Eddie Ng Hak-kim, today (April 19) presented certificates to 1 556 students who were offered scholarships and awards under the HKSAR Government Scholarship Fund (GSF) and 4 563 scholarship and award recipients under the Self-financing Post-secondary Education Fund (SPEF) in the 2015/16 academic year. The total value of scholarships and awards distributed to these 6 119 students amounted to about $140 million.
The GSF was established in 2008 to attract outstanding local students to advance their studies at home, and meritorious non-local students to pursue higher education opportunities in Hong Kong. Scholarships are offered to students studying full-time publicly funded sub-degree, undergraduate-level or above programmes. (A list of 10 participating institutions is in Annex I.)
The Self-financing Post-secondary Scholarship Scheme was established under the SPEF in 2011 to promote the quality and sustainable development of the self-financing post-secondary sector. Under the scheme, scholarships and awards are offered to students pursuing full-time locally accredited self-financing sub-degree or undergraduate programmes. (A list of 34 participating institutions is in Annex II.)
Apart from offering the Talent Development Scholarship and the Reaching Out Award, both the GSF and the SPEF give recognition to deserving post-secondary students with special educational needs (SEN) with the Endeavour Merit Award and the Endeavour Scholarship. This year, a total of 195 SEN students received the scholarship or award, compared with 149 last year.
In addition, the GSF awards targeted scholarships every year to first-year non-local full-time students from Association of Southeast Asian Nations countries, India and Korea, who are enrolled in publicly funded degree programmes in Hong Kong. The SPEF also offers the Outstanding Performance Scholarship and the Best Progress Award.
In the 2015/16 academic year, 1 189 local and 367 non-local students received scholarships and awards from the GSF. These include 952 publicly funded undergraduate-level or above students and 604 students studying in publicly funded sub-degree programmes. In addition, the GSF also reserved about $37.5 million for the Talent Development Scholarship and the Reaching Out Award. In the previous academic year, the total number of recipients of these two scholarships and awards was 3 347 and the total value amounted to about $33 million.
The SPEF offered scholarships and awards to 4 438 local and 125 non-local students this academic year. Of these recipients, 2 545 studied sub-degree programmes and the remaining 2 018 pursued undergraduate courses.
Details of the scholarships and awards under the GSF are available at www.edb.gov.hk/en/edu-system/postsecondary/local-higher-edu/publicly-funded-programmmes/scholarship.html. Those under the SPEF are available at www.cspe.edu.hk/content/Overview-Measures-Fund-SPSS?lang=EN.
Ends/Tuesday, April 19, 2016
Issued at HKT 16:40
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