EDUCATION
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Form 3. Prohibition on employing children will also be extended to help enforce compulsory school attendance.
In May, the government announced that a full-scale public examination to select pupils for subsidised senior secondary education would not be held at the end of Form 3. Instead, a new system of selection and allocation for educational opportuni- ties beyond Form 3, based on the recommendations of the Working Party on Selection and Allocation for Post-Form 3 Education published in November, 1977, will be operating by 1981. The main feature of the system will be internal school assessments in a range of academic subjects scaled by a test in the basic subjects of Chinese, English and mathematics. It will apply for the first time to all Primary 6-leavers who, having entered secondary schools in September, 1978, are scheduled to complete their three-year junior secondary course in 1981.
A White Paper on The Development of Senior Secondary and Tertiary Education was published on October 18, 1978. It presented proposals for the expansion and qualitative improvement of all stages of education, in schools and other institutions, for those completing the nine-year period of compulsory and universal education.
The principal measures described in the White Paper are:
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Subsidised places in senior secondary forms, technical institutes and adult educa- tion centres to be expanded to the full extent of demand from suitable students from the early 1980s;
• Subsidised Form 6 places to be made available for up to one-third of students entering subsidised Form 4 places two years previously;
All private non-profit-making schools, which are suitable and willing, to be brought by stages within the full scheme of assistance provided under a common Code of Aid;
• The senior secondary curriculum to be broadened with greater emphasis on practical and technical subjects, and improved facilities and support services;
• An improved scheme of teacher training;
•
Ordinary technician and equivalent commercial programmes to be expanded through the technical institutes, thus enabling the Hong Kong Polytechnic to concentrate on programmes at the higher technician and technologist levels;
• The approved expansion programmes for sixth-form and tertiary education to be achieved partly through the post-secondary colleges, to which assistance will be provided in respect of places on two-year courses at sixth-form level, and on subsequent two-year courses directed towards professional and vocational qual- ifications;
• The number of students taking degree courses to be increased by an expansion of the two universities, by the introduction of part-time internal degrees at the universities and, subject to the advice of the University and Polytechnic Grants Committee, by a limited degree programme at the Hong Kong Polytechnic;
• Improvements to be made to the Education Department's adult education courses and assistance to be provided to selected adult education projects run by volun- tary agencies.
Implementation of these proposals will increase recurrent expenditure by more than $640 million by 1985–6. Total recurrent expenditure on education may be expected to