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teaching in Chinese.
Nevertheless, decisions on the medium of
instruction should, for the foreseeable future, be left to
individual school authorities, who are best placed to assess
the needs of children attending their schools. It follows that
a pupil will take the new Hong Kong Junior Certificate Examination in the language of instruction used by his school.
2.14
Examinations
The Government acknowledges that the existing
Secondary School Entrance Examination should be phased out
as soon as it is no longer required for its present purpose
of determining whether a child should receive subsidised
secondary education. This will be possible as soon as the
target of 100% provision of junior secondary places (paragraph 2.2) is achieved.
2.15
A new public examination, the Hong Kong Junior
Certificate of Education, will be introduced at the end of the junior secondary school course, to serve two functions.
Firstly, it will provide evidence that a pupil has satisfactorily completed his education to Form III standard,
which should assist him in securing employment if he leaves
school at this stage. Secondly, it will serve as the means
of selection for those who wish to continue their studies
beyond Form III. The examination will be based on the common teaching syllabus for the junior secondary schools course and will not have a special syllabus of its own.
2.16
It would make unreasonable demands on a pupil to
require him to take both the Secondary School Entrance Examination and the Hong Kong Junior Certificate of Education. For this reason, the Hong Kong Junior Certificate of Education will only be introduced after the Secondary School Entrance
/Examination