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Our junior secondary curriculum aims to provide a balanced general education. When students move to the senior secondary level, they will follow either the science, arts, commercial or technical streams according to their interest and aptitude. According to the findings of the IEA Second Mathematics and Science study in 1988, our students at the senior secondary level performed extremely well, especially in Chemistry and Physics, although their performance at the junior secondary level was less satisfactory. Therefore, the results of a single study may not accurately reflect the overall performance of our students.
I now turn to the questions raised by the Member:
(a)
(b)
(c)
We are unable to provide statistics on funding on education as a percentage of Hong Kong's Gross National Product (GNP) in the past ten years as relevant figures are not available. Instead, we have attached at Appendix A a table showing the total funding for education as a percentage of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
Appendix B shows a comparison of total funding on education as a percentage of GDP among a number of countries/territories from 1985 to 1995. However, funding for education as a percentage of GDP may not be the most appropriate indicator of the proportion of public resources spent on education as our overall Government expenditure is only about 17% of GDP whereas the corresponding figures in many countries/territories are generally higher.
The Government is committed to developing the full potential of our children through education. We have taken a number of steps to ensure that our system of education and our curriculum, including the subjects of science and mathematics, are able to respond to the changing needs of the society. These include:
Regular updating of the school curriculum. Revised syllabuses for Mathematics at primary and secondary levels will be issued in 1999 and that for Science at junior secondary level in 1997;
Monitoring and advising schools on the quality of teaching through regular school inspections;
Providing in-service education programmes to teachers to upgrade their professional skills and update them on latest developments. The Education Department also provides teaching resources and guidelines as necessary;