Thanks to the strong economic rebound, the government has a surplus of more than 100 billion dollars, and therefore the educational sector is looking forward to hearing good news. However, the Budget, which was announced last week, has not yet tackled the thorniest educational issues, and the resources allocated are not proportional to the abundant financial surplus and stable economic development. Clearly, there are areas to which Mr. Tsang fails to address himself.
First, the crisis facing all primary and secondary schools is the termination of the Additional Capacity Enhancement Grant at the end of the second year. The contract of thousands of teaching staff recruited under the grant will not be renewed, which will probably trigger off cutbacks in personnel and unemployment of teachers. This grant of 1.65 million, which aims at relieving teachers?pressure and injecting manpower into schools, if terminated, will ironically engender the unemployment of a large number of teachers, and that will probably cause turbulences in the sector of primary and secondary schools, which will do non-negligible harm to the operation of schools and aggravate the workload of teachers. We therefore insist that the government should regularize the grant, and suggest making good use of the grant for integrated education, which can not only keep those contracted teachers in their positions, but also facilitate the handling of students of integrated education, so that the professionalism of the teaching staff can be more enhanced.
Another threat facing the secondary schools is that of school closures due to the decreasing population of form one students, which has reached its zenith. One of the biggest loopholes in the Budget, is that no supplementary resources will be provided for the realization of small class teaching in secondary schools. The reduction of classes and the school closures have been causing instabilities and anxieties in the education sector for many years, and remedies to the issues are the key to success of the education reforms. Therefore, we urge the government that those schools which mainly recruit band-3 students can first be allowed to determine whether their schools will adopt small-class teaching, so that those students with lower learning ability can be benefited first. And the government should reduce the number of students by at least two per class of secondary schools every year, or even more number of students, depending on individual situations, so that the stability of secondary schools can be ensured, for the realization of quality education under the coming New Senior School Curriculum.
Third, integrated education, which has been implemented in schools in full swing, has still left too much to be desired owing to the insufficient resources provided by the government, and that is now one of the most disappointing educational policies, which cannot provide students with special needs with appropriate care, and have been putting schools, parents and teachers in awkward positions. However, in the Budget of this year, the government still turns a blind eye to the dire straits, and the resources allocated is still so meager that the education sector feels very shocked and frustrated. We think that the distribution of resources should be student-based and extended to the secondary schools, and no maximum limit should be set, so that the bottleneck of the integrated education between primary and secondary schools can also be resolved. Moreover, the professional specialization should be encouraged so that care and attention to different types of students can be specialized and strengthened, and the government can inject specialized manpower and resources to the targeted schools. What掇 more, it is indispensable that in schools where integrated education is introduced, small class teaching should also be carried out.
This year, the government has not increased the number of university places, which has amounted to 14500 for 15 years. At the same time, the Financial Secretary has expanded the scope of the quality migration admission scheme, which is now also applicable to the students of Mainland China, thus reducing the chance of local students being admitted to the university. Last year, the Legislative Council has just passed the bill proposed by Cheung Man Kwong to increase the number of local university places, but the Financial Secretary still turned a blind eye to it. We wonder if Hong Kong can really develop itself as a regional educational hub.
Moreover, the amount of university research grants of Hong Kong is the lowest in comparison with that of other main economic systems. In the coming year, each institute is expected to be able to apply for a meager amount of two to three hundred million dollars from the Research Grants Council. We strongly request that the government should allocate more resources to the research grants, so that our research quality can be kept up to international standard. And the most disappointing is that the quality of associate degree programs has not yet ameliorated, and in the Budget there is still no more subsidies provided to those thirty thousand students. Our union also urges the government to rectify the injustice as soon as possible.
The pre-primary education sector also feels very frustrated about the Budget. Though the pre-primary education voucher scheme had been introduced, the salary level of teachers has not been upgraded, not only because more and more teachers have now been finishing their further studies, but also the pay scale for pre-primary schoolteachers has been cancelled. The supply of the qualified pre-primary schoolteachers exceeds the demand, which might finally give rise to the salary cut. Therefore, our union insists that a pay scale, which can mirror the academic qualifications of the current pre-primary teachers, should be established. Moreover, the government should also provide those schools recruiting a certain proportion of degree-holder teachers with an incentive grant, and improve the teacher-student ratio, so that their pressure can be relieved.
Finally, we welcome that the Education Bureau has allocated thirty thousand dollars per year to nineteen designated schools in the hope of facilitating schools to develop school-based Chinese Language curriculum for the non-Chinese students, and the Bureau has even announced the guidelines for the supplementary Chinese curriculum, considering making necessary arrangements for interested NCS students to participate in the GCSE (Chinese) examination, with which they can apply for admission to local universities. However, the headache facing those schools is that they still lack appropriate textbooks for this curriculum. Therefore, we hope that the government can take up the role of leadership or be a facilitator in the drafting of textbooks, so that their dire situation can be improved.
The more the surplus, the deeper our frustration? And that is our conclusion to the Budget of this year. In our opinion, the resources allocated to the education sector should be proportional to our economic growth. Our union is therefore organizing teachers and school heads, to keep on struggling for our pleas and the well being of the education sector. |
