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library organisation and control, important though these may be.
Educational television
7.20
An important initiative of the Education Department has been
the development of an educational television (ETV) service, now produced
with the technical assistance of Radio Television Hong Kong. This
service is making a considerable impact on the quality of education in
the classroom, comparing favourably with similar services in other
Originally confined to primary education and providing
countries.
support in Chinese, English, mathematics and social studies, ETV has now
been progressively extended to cover junior secondary forms in the same
group of subjects, with the addition of science. A recent decision
to provide colour receivers and video-cassette recorders for the primary
sector is greatly enhancing the quality and flexibility of the system.
The 1980 Green Paper proposes the establishment of regional libraries
of video-cassette tapes which schools may borrow: these would include
films dubbed on tape as well as previous ETV broadcasts. With a total
estimated audience in 1980 of some 270,000 secondary and 340,000 primary
pupils, the ETV service is undoubtedly supporting the curriculum in a
number of valuable ways for example, good models of spoken English are
made available to schools in which there is normally little or no contact
with an English-speaking environment, and the language can be more
realistically contextualised in visual situations; social studies can be
more directly related to features of local community development; and
basic scientific principles can be demonstrated in ways which the many
schools without well-developed laboratory facilities might find difficult
to achieve. From the very beginning of the service it was recognised that
its full potential would not be achieved (and, indeed, that the service.
was likely to be misused) without preliminary training for teachers, notes
for teachers suggesting preparatory and follow-up activities, and notes
and workbooks for pupils (the latter are restricted to primary pupils).
D