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(b) To encourage more schools to use Chinese as the medium of instruction in the coming years, the Education Department will continue to implement positive discrimination measures including the following:
(i) providing additional teachers of English, movable partitions, wirefree induction loop systems as well as one-off library grant to enhance English teaching and learning;
(ii) providing training courses to prepare teachers to teach in the medium of
Chinese;
(iii) providing incentives for publishers to produce good quality Chinese textbooks in various subjects - the Finance Committee of this Council has recently approved $54M for implementing phase 4 of the incentive scheme; and
(iv) providing glossaries of technical terms in both languages for major
subjects.
In addition, the Education Department is currently conducting a 3-year longitudinal study starting from 1994 to gauge the effects of different modes of medium of instruction on the academic achievement and leaming process of Secondary 1 to Secondary 3 students. In the light of these findings, we will formulate and issue to schools firm guidance in 1997 on the appropriate medium of instruction to be adopted starting from September 1998.
These efforts will be re-inforced by the following publicity activities to be launched by the Department in 1995/96, that is the current financial year:
(i) organising eight seminars on benefits of mother-tongue teaching for primary school teachers who will pass the messages onto their pupils and parents;
(ii) producing TV programines and Announcements of Public Interest (API) on
radio with the TV programmes targeted specially at parents;
(iii) displaying posters at MTR stations;
(iv) preparing and distributing new pamphlets to parents of Primary 4 to 6
students: and