Once the new system was introduced, the ESF would
be free, within reasonable limits, to introduce improvements in class sizes, teacher/class ratios and possibly in other areas, meeting the additional cost by means of increased fees. The level of fees would however remain subject to the approval of the Director of Education.
11
A new policy with regard to the provision of new school building is also proposed. Since new buildings would be required partly to meet increases in the number of English- speaking children and partly to enable reductions in class sizes to be made, it is not considered appropriate to provide the grants of up to 80% of the capital cost of new schools which are normal practice in the public sector generally. Instead it is proposed that interest-free loans from the Development Loan Fund should be made to cover the cost of buildings and equipment. Since the schools would be non-profit making, it is considered appropriate
to continue the practice of granting school sites by private treaty at nil premium on the same basis as other public sector schools. These new arrangements would not affect schools already approved (i.e. the new South Island and Stubbs Road Schools and the re- provisioning of Quarry Bay and Kennedy Road Schools) or the justified reprovisioning of existing schools. In these cases the normal rules would apply. ̈
}
The Government English Schools
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At present one secondary school and five primary schools are operated by the Government. Although these schools are directly financed by the Government, their costs are averaged with those of the ESF schools for the purpose of calculating fees which are thus brought to quality in both types of school. If the subsidy arrangements for the ESF schools are to be changed as proposed in the previous paragraphs, it would not be possible to continue to operate the Government schools as at present, since children are allocated to individual schools in accordance with geographical zones, and a two-tier system, with different fees and standards, would be most inequitable. It is therefore proposed that the Government schools should be transferred to the ESF, to be operated on the same basis as is proposed for its existing schools. There would be other advantages in bringing all publicly-financed English-speaking education under a single administrative body. The Government English section, with only one secondary school, cannot provide its teachers with comparable career prospects or the range of teaching experience that an enlarged ESF would be able to offer.
CONFIDENTIAL
機密