The Secretary for Education, Mr Kevin Yeung Yun-hung, today (April 24) presented certificates to around 1 400 and 5 200 awardees under the HKSAR Government Scholarship Fund (GSF) and the Self-financing Post-secondary Education Fund (SPEF) respectively for the 2017/18 academic year.
 
     The total value of scholarships and awards distributed to around 6 600 students in total amounted to about $142 million. In addition, the GSF has reserved about $32 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 2017/18 academic year, seven new Targeted Scholarships have been awarded, comprising three awardees from Korea, two from India and one awardee each from Singapore and Malaysia. 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 Indonesian students have been awarded with this scholarship for the first time 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, the Targeted Scholarships, Talent Development Scholarships, Reaching Out Awards and the Endeavour Merit Awards. 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 around 1 400 student awardees this academic year around 1 050 were local students and 350 were non-locals. In terms of level of study, around 880 students were at undergraduate level or above, while the remaining were at sub-degree level.
 
     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 Scholarships, Best Progress Awards, Talent Development Scholarships, Reaching Out Awards and Endeavour Scholarships. These scholarships and awards are offered to students pursuing full-time locally accredited self-financing sub-degree or undergraduate programmes. A list of 32 participating institutions is in Annex II. For the 2017/18 academic year, the SPEF offered scholarships and awards to around 5 020 local and around 180 non-local students. In terms of level of study, around 2 575 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 24, 2018
Issued at HKT 18:15

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