policy address

86. To help the economy power ahead, we must upgrade the quality of the local workforce to effectively cope with competition brought by globalisation. A quality workforce is more than a deciding factor in economic development. It also helps create social harmony. We place special emphasis on education, training and retraining. The resources put into education exceed one-fifth of the Government’s annual expenditure, which is higher than in many advanced societies. Here, I would like to reiterate that the Government will not cut back on total spending on education. We will insist on allocating substantial public financial resources to develop human capital and optimise our human resources. To facilitate the transition to a knowledge-based society, education reforms are being carried out steadily and have started to deliver results. We still have a long way to go, but we will stay the course and press ahead with these reforms.

87. On the new senior secondary education and higher education reform, we will take into account views collected from various sectors and devise feasible proposals covering the design, implementation details and financial arrangement of the academic structure reform. We plan to introduce the “3-3-4” academic structure in September 2009.

88. Chinese culture has a fine tradition of respect for teachers. Teachers deserve our respect and recognition for their many toils nurturing talent for the community. We rely on our fine professional teachers to implement quality education in Hong Kong. Through the Chief Executive’s Award for Teaching Excellence and Teachers’ Day, the Government will continue to express its regards and respect to the teaching profession.

89. The Government will allocate additional resources to public sector primary schools with at least 12 classes to improve the teacher-to-class ratio from this autumn. This will help relieve teachers’ workload, implement specialised teaching, and enhance the effectiveness of teaching. The Education and Manpower Bureau has embarked on a pilot study on small class teaching (SCT), which will provide a useful reference for the Government to decide on the necessary conditions and approaches for the territory-wide implementation of SCT.

90. Hong Kong’s development is geared towards the provision of quality services to the Mainland and the rest of the world. To achieve this, we must upgrade our biliterate and trilingual proficiency. We will regularly review the basic competence in Chinese and English of students from Primary One to Secondary Five, and target resources to reinforce language education. The Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority has developed the standards-referenced examinations for the Chinese Language and English Language subjects in the Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination for implementation in 2007. A standards-referenced assessment on Putonghua listening and oral skills has also been designed for students of Secondary Three or above for implementation in 2007. Enrolment is on a voluntary basis. To ensure their professional competence, all teachers of English and Putonghua are required to reach the language benchmarks by September 2006. A Professional Development Incentive Grant Scheme for Language Teachers has been launched to encourage and assist serving teachers to acquire higher professional qualifications in language teaching.

91. While engaged in nurturing local talent, we will actively seek to enhance the value of our education. We have traditionally deployed our first-class education resources to nurture talent for the entire Asia-Pacific region and to attract high quality students to study in Hong Kong. In future, we will be more proactive in attracting talent from the Mainland and overseas to come and settle here. In this connection, we have sought the views of various sectors and taken reference from overseas experience. We are considering introducing a new admission scheme in 2006. Under this scheme, a certain number of talented people from the Mainland and overseas who meet specific eligibility criteria will be allowed to stay in Hong Kong for a certain period of time, without the requirement of securing an offer of local employment beforehand. During their stay, they can decide whether they want to develop their career in Hong Kong on a long-term basis. We strongly believe that a larger pool of talent will increase our competitiveness, make Hong Kong more prosperous, attract more capital and create more jobs. This new blood will turn Hong Kong into an even more vibrant society.

92. To ensure that the overall quality of our population can meet the future demands of a knowledge-based economy, we need a comprehensive population policy. We will regularly review the progress of implementing the policy recommendations made in the Report of the Task Force on Population Policy in 2003, and make adjustments where necessary. The Task Force on Population Policy, headed by the Chief Secretary for Administration, is studying the changes in our demographic structure and the policies needed to respond to these changes. A report will be released next year for public consultation.