XN000022-1995-02-14 — Page 6

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Question 2: I have one concern to raise. It's about the unification of pre-primary centres. In your opening address on the 1994 Legislative Council meeting you shared about the Government plan on the improvement of training and of kindergarten teachers. It is applauding that Government has a commitment to improve the service, however I think it's important to include child care services as well. Although child care service, they basically provide care for children, yet while children are in the centres, they are helped develop and prepared for schooling. Now, the present qualification requirement is lower for child care workers. It is unfair for the workers to have lower education in order to fulfil the responsibility of child care workers. The qualification has some implications on the salary. In turn, it would affect the switching over of child care workers with.... This is just a mention of some In the Education implications and of course the wastage of training facilities. Commission of 1996, unification was opposed and we do not observe so much workers have done.

Our concern is on the unification of primary education and services and how can it be ensured that staff from... training, salary and other requirements such as space, children/teacher ratio can be achieved. I hope you can understand the concern. I'd like you to make a comment.

Governor: Absolutely, I can understand the concern and I'm not sure whether you'd like me to speak as the Governor who's responsible for the work of the Director of Social Welfare or as the Governor who's responsible for the work of the Director of Education. I can manage an answer under both hats, but perhaps I could try to answer right down the middle. You're entirely right that we do need to look, as a matter of some urgency, at the relationship between childcare centres and childcare workers and kindergartens and trained kindergarten teachers, because clearly among other things those who work in those two sectors see the relationships themselves and are certainly going to see the relationships if salaries in one level get very far out of line with salaries in another sector.

I think I'm right in saying that at the moment each year we have a requirement for about 700 new kindergarten teachers, to take account of wastage and to take account of expansion and inevitably some of those who work in childcare centres, 60% of whom have the same educational qualifications as people being trained as kindergarten teachers, inevitably there's going to be some drifting across.