4.
personal capacity (in education, this usually means heads and teachers
drawn from different types of school): these members often outnumber
official members, as in the Working Party on the Replacement of the
Secondary School Entrance Examination which, like other working parties
of its kind, solicited public representations on the issues concerned so
that these could be taken into account at an early stage. Though these
matters are in no way circumscribed by rule or custom, it is generally
true to say that in recent times major official initiatives in education
have entailed the establishment of working parties which are wholly
official, with public comment forming a vital stage of the deliberations,
but that there have been a variety of occasions when officials and
unofficials have worked together, particularly on matters arising from
the implementation of education policies. A notable exception to this,
however, is the 1973 Board of Education report on secondary education,
which was tabled without change as a green paper in the Legislative
Council (the 1973 Green Paper) and, moreover, the recently convened
Committee to Review Post-Secondary and Technical Education (a major policy
field) has both official and unofficial membership at a high level. Thus
it may be said that while the system is still emerging no hard and fast
rules apply.
4.5
In the field of education, official working parties normally
submit a confidential report to the Director of Education or to the
Secretary for Social Services. This is usually a frank document which
explores all the feasible options for development in considerable detail,
taking into account social, political, economic and financial implications
and recommending specific lines of action which are known to be
acceptable in principle to the government departments and branches concerned.
Before formal submission the report is normally made available (also on
a confidential basis) to the major advisory bodies. Hence the reports
of the Working Party on the Review of Primary Education and the Working