Statement by the Chairman (Hon. Director of Education)
to the Staff Side at the Education Department Consultative Council, Hong Kong.
You have been aware for some time a my concern with the numbers of Government primary schol teachers surplus to operational requirements. This has been discussed in general terms at Council meetings in the past when you have sought the preservation of jobs and prospects of these teachers. More recently you have pressed for details as to how teachers will be usefully and purposefully redeployed. I have told you that the jobs and propects of Government primary school teachers are very importa considerations but that they must not conflict with the public interest, and I have said that these teachers are also Civil Servants whose continued employment depends on their suitability for other forms of employment in the Education Department, in particular, and in the Civil Service, in general. I am now in a position to specify rather more precisely the dimensions of the problem and what should
be done about it.
2.
There is a related issue which I must first describe. You will
remember that the Srecial Commission appointed by H. E. the Governor under the chairmanship of Mr. T.K. Ann in 1973 made a recommendation that Government
primary schools might be decentralised, i.e. handed over to the Aided sector. This recommendation and others, together with your views on the Report, have been carefully studied by the Board of Education, and I am now in a position to tell you that, as a consequence of advice to H.E. the Governor, the matter has again been carefully considered by the Executive Council. The Governor has now orders that there will be no decentralisation, or disestablishment, of Government primary schools. I am sure you will welcome this decision
because it means that there will ce a permanent Government primary school
sector.
3.
This decision, however, carries the rider that, as long as the pupil population of Government primary schools continues to diminish, there can be no justification for empty schools with full teaching establishments. In other words, this means that as Covernment primary schools cortinue to run down because of a declining pupil population attributed to a variety of causes, not the least being that the birthrate is falling and that people are moving elsewhere, these schools will continue to be closed and, perhaps, utilised in other ways. But it also means that we must attempt to level off the trend so that we will have a basc number of Government primary schools which will constitute a permanent Government primary school sector. It is difficult to predict with any certainly what this number will be, but,
/in the