EDUCATION
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Language in Education
To encourage secondary schools to increase the use of Chinese as the language of in- struction, additional teachers of English and other resources have been provided since September 1988 to secondary schools which made greater use of Chinese, so as to avert any consequential drop in the standard of English due to reduced exposure. In 1990, a further 13 schools increased their use of Chinese as the medium of instruction.
The Expatriate English Language Teacher pilot scheme was completed in mid-1989. The final evaluation revealed that the scheme had had a significant effect in several areas of English language learning. Meanwhile, to maintain continuity, a modified scheme came into operation in schools with vacancies for English teachers. In its second year, 23 expatriate teachers were teaching in six aided secondary schools and eight government secondary schools. A more permanent scheme to help secondary schools recruit expatriate English language teachers will start in 1991.
The Chinese Textbooks Committee (CTC) continued its work in support of the policy of encouraging schools to adopt Chinese as the medium of instruction. The Incentive Award Scheme, which was implemented to encourage the production of good quality Chinese textbooks in a wide range of subjects, proceeded smoothly. Following the production of Chinese textbooks for general subjects, Phase 2 of the scheme was implemented to en- courage the production of Chinese textbooks for eight practical and technical subjects at - secondary level. Editorial assistance work, provided by the Advisory Inspectorate to the participating publishers, was completed in March 1990 and the textbooks should be ready for use by September 1991.
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Institute of Language in Education
The Institute of Language in Education was founded in September 1982 as a 'centre of excellence' for all matters relating to language learning and teaching in Hong Kong schools.
During the year, the institute continued to organise full-time, in-service retraining courses for experienced non-graduate primary and secondary school teachers of English. New courses for graduate secondary school teachers of English and Chinese were con- ducted from September 1990. Altogether 1035 teachers attended courses at the institute during the year. Secondary school teachers of English who had successfully completed full-time courses in 1988 and 1989 were offered the opportunity to participate in a three- week residential course run by the institute at the University of Hong Kong, followed by a four-week course in one of several selected language teaching centres in the United King- dom. In addition to the full-time retraining courses, part-time programmes in Methods of Teaching Putonghua and Putonghua Proficiency were arranged for 493 practising teachers. Also courses on the use of Chinese for the teaching of specific subjects in Chinese were run for 32 teachers.
In December, the institute organised its sixth International Conference, which focused on the planning, managing and implementation of language teaching and training pro- grammes. Local and overseas language specialists from 22 countries attended the event. In the area of research and development, the institute completed enquiries into the applica- tion of questioning in the teaching of reading, the curriculum requirements of primary school teachers of Chinese and streaming at the primary school level. In May 1990, the Hongkong Bank Foundation announced that it would donate $20 million to the