4
EDUCATION AT THE CROSSROADS
A further highlight of 1981 was the government's announcement of a $320 million programme of co-ordinated measures to improve the standard of the Chinese and English languages in schools and in the community. This programme included the revision of language syllabuses to give students more opportunity to use Chinese and English purposefully as a tool of communication; the provision of a wire-free induction loop system to support language lessons; research projects on the medium of instruction in secondary schools; the provision of additional teachers in secondary schools for remedial language teaching; and the establishment, in 1982, of an Institute of Language in Education whose first and most urgent task was to be the re-training and updating of non-graduate teachers of the two languages. At the same time a working party was established to study the feasibility of setting up an independent Chinese Language Foundation to promote and facilitate the use of Chinese within the community as a tool for communication, study, work and leisure.
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The Overall Review
Against this background of educational development the Panel of Visitors began their task of reviewing the system early in 1981. Led by Sir John Llewellyn, former Director-General of the British Council and Vice-Chancellor of Exeter University, the panel carried out the review in eight stages between April 1981 and November 1982. It was recognised from the outset that there was bound to be a substantial body of criticism within the community of a system which then provided for more than 1.4 million children in school (some 27 per cent of the total population) as well as supporting a widely diversified post-school educational sector, and that no review of the system, however searching, could possibly take into account every facet of that criticism. There were nevertheless certain themes that were common to the voiced opinions of many individuals and groups with otherwise divergent views on various aspects of education and these attracted much publicity as the review began.
There was, for example, a strongly-held belief that the low growth rate of student numbers in the universities (at the time three per cent, later revised to four per cent, per annum) and the then ceiling of 12 000 full-time equivalent students at the Hong Kong Polytechnic, would have uncomfortable implications for Hong Kong's economic pros- perity and social wellbeing: hence the University and Polytechnic Grants Committee had recommended that there should be a survey of all tertiary and higher level education, taking fully into account the type and range of courses offered by the Polytechnic and the technical institutes. The Advisory Committee on Diversification had also expressed concern that the current higher education targets might not produce sufficient skilled and professionally trained personnel (particularly in the technological field) to meet the demands of potential students and the needs of the economy; that the technical institutes should achieve greater flexibility of response to the needs of industry; and that part-time adult education should be a means for upgrading Hong Kong's manpower.
There were several important factors to take into account in securing a balance between social and economic demand in the provision of higher education in Hong Kong. These were the recent increase in fees and other restrictions which had curtailed the numbers of Hong Kong students obtaining places in tertiary institutions overseas; the likely increase in the number of post-sixth-form candidates suitable for further education as a result of the expansion of secondary education; and the need to establish the right mix of educational opportunities so as to produce a balance of trained manpower suitable for probable employment demands. The apparent conflict between social demand (given the