Progress Report on the Education Reform (2)

Section 3 : Support for Schools

Target

In the course of implementing the Education Reform, schools and teachers will inevitably face many challenges and problems. Different sectors of the community are very willing to provide support to schools and teachers to enhance the quality of education. Apart from providing direct support to schools, the Government is also promoting the co-operation between schools and other sectors so as to enrich the learning experiences of students.

Last Year's Progress

(1) On-site Support to Schools in Curriculum Development

Please refer to Section 1 for details.

(2) Capacity Enhancement Grant

• To relieve the workload of teachers, the Government has, starting from the 2000/01 school year, provided schools with the Capacity Enhancement Grant. The amount is adjusted according to the movement of the Composite Consumer Price Index. Schools can make use of the grant to employ additional staff or hire outside services so as to relieve teachers' workload, thus enabling them to concentrate more on the Education Reform. In the 2000/01 school year, each primary school was provided $450,000 or $550,000 and each secondary school $250,000 or $300,000. (The higher rates were applicable to schools with 19 or more classes and the lower rates to schools with less than 19 classes.) From the 2001/02 school year onwards, the grant to secondary schools has been increased by 50%.

• In the 2001/02 school year, schools used the grant to employ a total of 2 743 full-time and 2 562 part-time staff, and to hire outside services. The feedback from many schools and teachers was very positive. They generally considered that the grant had helped to relieve the workload of teachers and had enhanced the effectiveness of teaching and learning.

• We obtained, on 3 June 2003, the approval of the Finance Committee of the Legislative Council to refining the existing two-tier rate structure with effect from the 2003/04 school year by introducing more funding levels to the grant for more effective use of public money.

(3) Quality Education Fund (QEF)

• The QEF has completed six rounds of grant allocation. A total of 4 889 projects have been approved with funds amounting to $2.94 billion. Over 1 350 schools have benefited from the projects. Please refer to Tables (3.1) and (3.2) for details.

• Following the recommendation of a consultant on an evaluation model for QEF projects, a series of seminars cum training on performance indicators and evaluation methodology for school heads and project leaders to implement QEF projects were conducted in November and December 2002.

Table 3.1 Six Rounds of Grant Allocation by the QEF

Information Source: Education and Manpower Bureau

Table 3.2 Nature of the Projects Approved by the QEF in the Past Six Rounds

Source: Education and Manpower Bureau

(4) Parent Education and Home-School Co-operation

• For parent education, the emphasis will be placed on producing parent education reference materials and training of parent education programme organizers.
  
• Training courses are provided for parents to be counselors for their peers, and teachers for the role of parent education workers.
  
• The Parent Education Programme Grant is set up to offer assistance to schools in implementing parent education activities and to provide further support to parents with special needs and those not easy to get in touch with.
  
• It is anticipated that Parent-Teacher Associations (PTA) will play a significant role in school management. To cope with this trend, one of the focuses of the Committee on Home-School Co-operation will be further promoting the setting up of PTAs with a view that PTAs are established in all public sector schools.

(5) Support by Other Sectors

• Many different sectors in the community, with abundant resources and talents, are well placed to provide support for schools to enrich the learning experiences of students. The EMB has actively encouraged different government departments and other sectors of the community to build up partnerships with schools so as to provide students with diversified and enlightening learning experiences. Details of the support activities are as follows:
  

Tasks Ahead for the Coming Year

(1) Quality Education Fund

• Entering into its sixth year, the QEF will shift its work focus to promoting experiences and outcomes of successful projects. Among the four thousand plus projects approved by the QEF in the past five years, many of them have been completed and borne fruits. The QEF has developed strategy to promote systematically the products of projects on different themes to the education sector for experience sharing and reference. It has also commissioned the Chinese University of Hong Kong to conduct highlight studies on successful experiences of winners of the "Outstanding Schools Awards". Their experiences will be promoted to the education sector later this year.

• To maintain the continual operation of the QEF, the QEF Steering Committee will continue to set limits to grant allocation for each call for applications and individual project. This will intensify the competition among projects during the assessment process, and only high quality and worthwhile projects will be approved.
  

(2) On-site Support to Schools in Curriculum Development

• Please refer to Section 1 for details.
  

Section 4 : Professional Development

Back to Table of Contents