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Education Department's commitments will be honoured
Candidates in previous cycles of the Non-graduate Teacher Qualifications Assessment (NGTQA) Scheme have been assured that the Education Department will continue to honour its commitments after the discontinuation of the scheme on completion of the 1997 cycle.
The commitments include supervised teaching practice for candidates who have passed all three parts of the assessment, and resitting arrangements for eligible candidates who failed the English Language Proficiency Test, the English Oral Proficiency Test, and/or one subject examination.
Completion of these commitments is expected to take two to four years.
Meanwhile, the department shares the view of the Advisory Committee on Teacher Education and Qualifications that to improve the quality of education in schools, there should be in place an all-trained profession familiar with local curriculum development and with the needs of local students.
The department considers that holders of overseas qualifications intending to enter the teaching profession should receive local teacher training.
In this regard, there are various teacher education course or degree courses currently run by local tertiary institutes such as the Open Learning Institute and the Chinese University of Hong Kong, upon completion of which potential NGTQA candidates can join the teaching profession in the territory.
A working group set up to review the NGTQA Scheme has found it difficult to justify the continuation of the Scheme which is of interest to a small group of people only and which is set against a climate in which the demand for trained non-graduate primary school teachers is not acute and avenues for entry into the local teaching profession are not absent.
Applications for the last cycle of the NGTQA Scheme will be invited in mid- November. Details will be announced separately.
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