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* $30 million for organising additional training courses for 1,130 kindergarten teachers to enhance the quality of kindergarten education, including a Qualified Kindergarten Teachers course, a top-up course for Qualified Assistant Kindergarten Teachers and a new in-service Certificate Course in Kindergarten Education;
* $19 million for completing in 1995-96 two new Skills Opportunity Schools to help students with learning difficulties; and
* $4 million for providing induction and orientation courses for 6,000 immigrant students to help integrate them into the local educational system.
"This means that all the new initiatives announced in the Governor's Policy Address in October 1994 will be implemented in the next financial year," Mr Leung said.
The Government will reinforce the various ongoing improvement programmes by:
spending an additional $255 million to upgrade teacher education;
* an additional 114 non-graduate teachers to be provided in secondary schools;
an extra graduate teacher for each of a further 60 schools with a high proportion of low achievers;
* reducing the class size from 40 to 35 to Primary 3 in all primary schools in September 1995; and
* 17 more primary schools will operate on a whole day basis in September 1995
"As a result of many of these improvement measures, the teacher:pupil ratio will be further improved to 1:23.8 for our primary schools and 1:19.5 for our secondary schools," he said.
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