Overview
The Government's policy objectives are to:
In the 2023/24 school year, there are 594 primary schools, 512 secondary day schools and 63 special schools.
The Government aims to raise the quality of primary school education:
The Government aims to enable all primary school students to enjoy whole-day schooling. Except one school, all government and aided primary schools have been converted into whole-day operation. The Government would adopt a pragmatic and flexible approach in working out with the remaining bi-sessional school on an agreed whole-day conversion plan. More details are available on the webpage of Major Initiatives - Whole-day Primary Schooling.
The Chief Executive has announced in the 2007-08 Policy Address that the Government will, where circumstances permit, implement SCT in public sector schools by phases, starting from Primary 1 in the 2009/10 school year and extending progressively to cover Primary 1 to Primary 6 by the 2014/15 school year. The Government has been pragmatic and flexible with the implementation, taking into account the latest projection of school-aged student population, the availability of classrooms and schools’ development needs. More details are available on the webpage of Small Class Teaching.
The Government launched the first, second and third IT in Education Strategies in 1998, 2004 and 2008 respectively to tie in with the global trend of harnessing IT to facilitate learning and teaching. Building on the strengths and experiences of the previous strategies on Information Technology in Education (ITEd), the Government launched the Fourth Strategy on Information Technology in Education in the 2015/16 school year. It is formulated to unleash the learning power of all our students to learn to learn and to excel through realising the potential of IT in enhancing interactive learning and teaching experiences. To achieve this goal, the Government has adopted a holistic approach under which six actions are implemented. More details are available on the webpage of the IT in Education.
The curriculum reform is now moving towards continual curriculum renewal. We will review and update relevant curriculum guides as necessary, and provide support to primary school heads, curriculum leaders and teachers, so as to foster students’ whole-person development and equip them for coping with different local and global changes. More details are available on the webpage of Curriculum Development.
Our language policy is that students should be literate in both Chinese and English and be able to speak fluent Cantonese, Putonghua and English. The Education Bureau (EDB)’s measures to enhance “biliteracy and trilingualism” include:
School premises completed in recent years, some 40% bigger than the standard designs of 1995 in terms of total floor areas, provide more facilities and open space to meet the latest requirements for effective learning and teaching. Most of them are individually designed by architects in the market, taking into consideration their physical locations and the educational visions of the school sponsoring bodies. We have also put in place various measures to enhance facilities and environment for school premises built in accordance with the building standards at the time of construction.
We are closely monitoring the admission of newly arrived children and young people to ensure that there are adequate school places and support services to cater for their educational needs. In parallel, we have been providing the following support services for these children and young people to help them integrate into the local school system as soon as possible -
We will, subject to the assessment and recommendations of specialists and the consent of parents, refer students with more severe or multiple disabilities to special schools for intensive support services. Other students with special educational needs (SEN) will attend ordinary schools. According to their types, the EDB will provide aided special schools with additional teachers, specialists and extra resources to meet the diverse needs of their students. Some of the aided special schools operate a boarding section concurrently to provide boarding service. The EDB has all along been promoting integrated education in accordance with five basic principles of early identification, early intervention, Whole School Approach, home-school co-operation and cross-sector collaboration. In addition to the regular subvention, the EDB provides public sector ordinary schools with additional resources, professional support and teacher training to help schools cater for students with SEN. In the 2019/20 school year, all public sector ordinary schools have been provided with Special Educational Needs Coordinator (SENCO) to support integrated education. Concurrently, for schools with comparatively large number of students with SEN, the rank of their SENCO has been upgraded to a promotion rank. More details are available on the webpage of Special Education.