2
1.3
The present report is principally concerned with the administration
and control of education, mechanisms for educational planning and policy
formulation, educational research, the financing of education and provision
of places, tertiary education, teacher education, the establishment and
maintenance of standards in the school system, and prospects for the future
development of education (the latter represented as questions to be debated
rather than as specific policy proposals). The following comments on
aspects of Hong Kong's present demography and economy are intended to
preface the brief survey of the development of the school system and the
description of the characteristics of the education system which follow in
chapter 2.
1.4
The pressures exerted by Hong Kong's burgeoning population on
virtually every facet of the territory's social and economic development
have been well documented in recent years and there is now a growing
international awareness notwithstanding certain inevitable distortions
and misunderstandings - of the scale of the problem. The facts speak for
themselves. Hong Kong supports in a land area of only 1,060 square
kilometres a population estimated at the end of 1980 to be 5,147,900, the
recent unacceptably high growth rate resulting from illegal immigration
(before measures were taken in 1980 to bring it under control). With
built-up areas occupying less than 16 per cent of the total land area
(some 75 per cent being marginal land and the remainder being used for
farming), the population density in the metropolitan areas is at present
higher than 25,400 per square kilometre, placing urban Hong Kong among
the most densely populated places of the world. The education system, no
less than the social services generally, is under continuous pressure from
the weight of the people it serves (and more significantly, from those