development plans for junior, senior secondary and tertiary education, and
these plans are now being implemented. Soon we shall go through the same
process in respect of primary and pre-primary education. So why, you may
well ask, yet another review? Are we not in danger of too much planning,
too many reviews? The plans I have referred to, have been designed to
suit our own local and particular circumstances, they have been evolved
over a number of years by Government with advice from the Board of
Education, UPGC, as well as other interested bodies, in the light of public
commente: they include much-needed, far reaching changes and improvements,
and undoubtedly by the mid-eighties we shall have an improved educational
system. So again why the big review in 19817 It is to ensure that
we are, in fact, on the right track. So far we have, perhaps inevitably,
looked at the system piece-meal: we now feel it important to look at the
system as a whole before our plans become too entrenched: to study what
Mrs Symons has called the interfaces between the various levels of
education: to study too the part which non-academic subjects have to play
in the education system in the context of modern Hong Kong. Hong Kong is
changing at a rapid pace; it.is inevitable that, as a community, our hopes
and aspirations will be changing too. In many ways we are an international
-
community with an international outlook
as one would expect of one of
the World's greatest ports, as one would expect of a leading manufacturing
and trading territory: but in some ways too we are parochial and often
inward-looking. It is intended therefore that those invited to carry out
this major review should include persons from abroad with expertise and
experience in education in addition to local participation: this to
ensure that our education system is up-to-date, that it may take its
proper, and important, place in the World of Education. Perhaps, Mra Symons,
the idea of being internationally accepted and acclaimed under the label
"Educated in Hong Kong" is more real than some may think.
/Clearly the.....