(b)
-
12
—
The pilot benchmark exercise arises from the Education Commission Report No. 6 (ECR 6) which recommended that language benchmark qualifications should be specified for all new and serving primary and secondary teachers, including language teachers, so as to address the problem of declining language standards of our students. This is one amongst a host of measures which ECR 6 recommended to solve the language ability problem. The Advisory Committee on Teacher Education and Qualifications (ACTEQ) was tasked to develop the benchmarks. With the help of language consultants and after one year's study, ACTEQ has drawn up tentative benchmarks for finalisation in the coming pilot exercise.
ACTEQ will co-ordinate the pilot benchmarking exercise. The Hong Kong Examinations Authority will administer the written and oral examinations while the Education Department will be responsible for conducting the classroom language observation.
In order to ensure that the finalised benchmarks will be representative and appropriate, the 1,200 teachers will be randomly selected from different types of schools, with different qualifications and lengths of teaching experience.
To allow teachers to have early knowledge of the standards required and what would be included in the benchmark assessment, syllabuses and specimen tasks will be published well in advance.
Subject to the results of the pilot and any exemption criteria subsequently developed, new and serving teachers will be required to reach the benchmarks. We plan to implement the language benchmarks, once finalised, for new teachers as soon as possible, and in 1999 at the earliest. As for serving teachers, ECR 6 recommended that they might be allowed 10 years to reach the benchmarks. ACTEQ will, based on the results of the pilot and re-training needs, advise on this.
According to the results of the 1996 Teacher Survey conducted by the Education Department, the statistics of Chinese and English language teachers with and without subject training are as follows:
(i) The numbers of Chinese Language teachers who are subject- trained at primary and secondary levels are 9848 (i.e. 87.3%) and 3884 (i.e. 79.2%) respectively.