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Enhancement of information technology education welcomed
The Secretary for Education and Manpower, Mr Joseph W P Wong, welcomed the proposal in the 1997/98 Budget announced by the Financial Secretary, Mr Donald Tsang, that the Government would spend $300 million over the next two years to provide multi-media computers to all public sector primary schools and to set up Information Technology Learning Centres (ITLC) in prevocational and technical schools.
He said: "One of the Government's new initiatives to improve basic education this year is to enhance information technology education.
"To achieve this purpose, each government or aided primary school will be equipped with 15 multi-media computers, which means the provision of a total of 8,250 multi-media computers in all government and aided primary schools to benefit some 411.000 students.
"In addition, computer training courses ranging from 18 to 120 hours will be provided to some 15,200 teachers."
Mr Wong said that the Government would also provide ITLC in all 27 prevocational and 19 secondary technical schools to benefit some 43,000 students.
Each ITLC will be equipped with 41 computers, computer-aided design and manufacturing equipment, and computer-assisted learning packages. In addition, appropriate training will be arranged for teachers.
Mr Wong pointed out the proposal of providing $300 million for the purpose of enhancing information technology education was an important element to coincide with the rapid technology development in Hong Kong and took a big step forward to provide information technology education in local primary and secondary schools.
He reiterated that improvements would be made in seven areas to enhance the development of basic education. Apart from enhancement of the information technology education, the Government will implement new measures to further improve the teaching and learning environment, support services for new arrival children, quality of school education, special education, language proficiency and civic education.
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