XN000022-1973-07-10 — Page 3

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Tuesday, July 10, 1973

"Provision is made for teachers' courses,

more generous assistance

for furniture and equipment and for libraries, while the new staffing structure

greatly increases the number of promotion posts for both graduate and non-graduate

teachers in these schools.

The second five-year development programme for Special Education

has been approved and is making rapid progress," Mr. Lowe said.

A new secondary school standard plan for three or five-year course

schools has been worked out and will be built into the new estates and new towns.

He said: "It is a good design in no way sub-standard and will be of

great benefit in enabling secondary provision to be built into estates from

the very beginning as primary is now."

The Director expressed the hope that when secondary target figures

were agreed, it would be possible to aid private schools such as Pui Ching

and bring under subsidy the good quality private schools that had, as he put

it "laboured long, hard and successfully in the hot noon-day sun",

Everyone was aware that the present secondary system was too academic

and too much geared to the needs of the minority elite who wanted a good

Certificate of Education with Matriculation to follow.

Mr. Lowe pointed out: "What we already require and will require on

a much greater scale when the expansion plans are in full swing is a more

practical secondary course geared to life and the needs of the pupils rather

than to the Certificate of Education."

It was vital for Hong Kong to get its future secondary education

right

-

"suitable to the needs

educational and above all, social

of

the pupils, not only for the sake of future generations but for the future

development of Hong Kong",

/It was