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Chapter 7
Education
The Government is committed to improving the quality of education to equip the younger generation to meet the challenges of the 21st century. The New Senior Secondary curriculum implemented under the New Academic Structure since 2009 enables all students to study a broad and balanced curriculum for whole-person development and life-long learning.
Key Achievements in 2011
Developing Publicly-funded and Self-financing Post-secondary Education
The Government follows a two-pronged strategy to promote the parallel development of the publicly-funded and self-financing sectors. To meet the future development needs of Hong Kong, it continues to invest heavily in the publicly- funded sector. Starting from the 2012-13 school year, the number of places for the senior year intake will double progressively to 4 000, and the first-year-first-degree (FYFD) places will increase to 15 000 per annum. After implementation of the New Academic Structure (NAS), the number of undergraduates in publicly-funded institutions will rise by about 40 per cent by 2016. By the 2014-15 school year, the annual recurrent grants for the eight publicly-funded institutions will increase by about $3 billion or 27 per cent, to $14.3 billion.
The Government provides the self-financing sector with a basket of support measures. Apart from offering land at nominal premium to non-profit-making post- secondary institutions and providing interest-free loans to support institutions in developing premises, grants are also provided to fund initiatives dedicated to enhancing the quality of teaching and learning.
Furthermore, the Government has received nine expressions of interest from local and non-local institutions for a site at Queen's Hill, which will provide a gross floor area of more than 100 000 square metres and is suitable for the development of self-financing tertiary institutions with boarding facilities. The $2.5 billion Self- financing Post-secondary Education Fund was established in November 2011. The fund provides scholarships and supports worthwhile initiatives and schemes that aim to enhance the quality of self-financing post-secondary education.