The Secretary for Education, Mr Eddie Ng Hak-kim, today (April 18) presented certificates to over 1 550 and 4 850 awardees, respectively, under the HKSAR Government Scholarship Fund (GSF) and the Self-financing Post-secondary Education Fund (SPEF) for the 2016/17 academic year.

     The total value of scholarships and awards distributed to over 6 400 students in total amounted to about $146 million. In addition, the GSF has reserved about $37.5 million for the Talent Development Scholarship and the Reaching Out Award.

     Both the GSF and the SPEF give recognition to meritorious post-secondary students with special educational needs (SEN) through the Endeavour Merit Award and the Endeavour Scholarship. This year, a total of around 200 SEN students were given the award/scholarship.

     In addition, the GSF awards Targeted Scholarships under the Targeted Scholarship Scheme 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. In the 2016/17 academic year, 10 new Targeted Scholarships have been awarded, comprising six awardees from Malaysia, and two awardees each from India and Korea. Starting from the 2016/17 academic year, the Belt and Road (B&R) Scholarship (Indonesia) was introduced under the Targeted Scholarship Scheme to encourage more students from the B&R regions to pursue undergraduate studies in Hong Kong. Ten B&R Scholarships (Indonesia) have been awarded in this academic year.

     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 and awards under the GSF are, namely Scholarships for Outstanding Performance, Targeted Scholarship, Talent Development Scholarship, Reaching Out Award and Endeavour Merit Award. 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. Out of over 1 550 student awardees in this academic year, around 1 200 were local students while over 350 were non-locals. In terms of level of study, around 980 students were at undergraduate level or above, while the remaining were at sub-degree level.

     On the other hand, 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. There are five types of scholarships and awards under the scheme, namely Outstanding Performance Scholarship, Best Progress Award, Talent Development Scholarship, Reaching Out Award and Endeavour Scholarship. These 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. For the 2016/17 academic year, the SPEF offered scholarships and awards to over 4 690 local and about 160 non-local students. In terms of level of study, over 2 310 of them pursued undergraduate studies while the others were sub-degree students.

     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 18, 2017
Issued at HKT 17:35

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