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Substantial increase in expenditure on basic education
The Government will continue to invest heavily in improving education in Hong Kong in the 1997-98 financial year. The total expenditure on education is about $45.315 billion, which represents the largest share (18.2 per cent)of the total public expenditure.
This was revealed by the Secretary for Education and Manpower, Mr Joseph W P Wong, this (Thursday) afternoon at a press conference on the 1997/98 draft estimates of expenditure on education and employment.
He noted that the expenditure on education in 1997/98 represented a nominal increase of 15.7 per cent over the revised estimate of this year or 7.7 per cent in real terms. The figure was higher than the 6.9 per cent increase in real terms of the total public expenditure.
Mr Wong pointed out that as the tertiary education has entered a consolidation stage, the increase in expenditure on basic education will be comparatively higher than that of tertiary education. The expenditure on basic education is $30.669 billion or 67.7 per cent of the total expenditure on education. This represents an increase of 18.3 per cent and 10.3 per cent in nominal and real terms respectively over that of the current year.
He emphasised that improvements would be made in six main areas to enhance the development of basic education at a non-recurrent expenditure of $3.831 billion and recurrent expenditure of over $900 million a year. The estimated expenditure for 1997/98 is $278 million.
The six areas of improvements and new measures are: (1) teaching and learning environment; (2) support services for new arrival children; (3) quality of school education; (4) special education; (5) language proficiency; and (6) civic education.
will:
To improve teaching and learning environment, Mr Wong said the Government
build nine schools, including six primary and three secondary schools, by the 1999 academic year at a non-recurrent cost of $488 million and recurrent cost of $194 million a year; and
improve the environment of another 150 schools at a non-recurrent expenditure of $2.557 billion between 1997 and 2000.
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