CONFIDENTIAL
機密
4.2
2
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Standards depend upon a number of factors, arguably
Of slightly lesser
the most important being the capability of the teachers.
importance are the nature of the curriculum, the school environment
and the teaching materials available. The Government intends to make
improvements in all these aspects of primary education.
Teachers in Primary Schools
4.3
dards of
Heads and teachers play the major role in establishing the stan-
education and it is essential that their training fits them
for this task. The 1978 White Paper mentioned above extended the length
of the non-graduate teacher training course from two to three years with
a two-year course reserved for those with at least two subjects with Grade E
or above at Advanced level. However, while this will ensure that all new
entrants to the profession will be adequately trained, a majority of the
present teaching force has only had two years' training and in a large
number of cases only a one-year training course. As a result, the majority
of existing teachers are not trained to standards now considered desirable,
while even the new three-year trained teachers will need refresher training
after they have been teaching for a few years.
4.4
The 1980 Green Paper proposed regular courses of systematic
retraining for serving primary school teachers and it is proposed to
implement this retraining in September 1982.
4.5
A course of retraining lasting about eight weeks will be
available for teachers twice during their teaching careers: the first
taking place from five to ten years after initial training and the second about
ten years later. This training will be compulsory for teachers entering public-
CONFIDENTIAL #3
/ sector