XN000022-1995-10-11 — Page 12

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Question: Yes. But are you expecting a deluge of flooding of private members' Bills in the LegCo and that's why you are setting up the office itself?

Governor: 'No. You want to follow up, yes. Sorry.

Question: What is your first policy to create a modern education system in Hong Kong? I mean in particular for Hong Kong higher education levels. And how do you achieve your goal?

Governor: What is my policy to?

Question: Your first priority.

Governor: In education?

Question: Correct.

Govemor: In education as a whole?

Question: Yes.

".

Governor: I think my first priority is much the same as that of most teachers and parents. We have inevitably concentrated in the last couple of decades on quantity: increasing provision at the primary and secondary level and then in the last decade the huge increase in provision at the tertiary level, from a position ten years ago when only about 3% of the age group went on into tertiary education to a position today when about 24% go on to tertiary education, about 18% to do university degrees. Now, that huge expansion has been entirely right, it's been costly, it's put quite a lot of demands on the system, and I think what teachers and parents are now looking for is a greater accent on quality. And in particular they are looking for us to put more emphasis on teacher training, on increasing the number of graduate teachers in the profession, on reducing class sizes, on increasing the number of teachers in our primary and secondary schools, and improving the conditions in which they have to teach.

I think there are equal concerns about quality in the tertiary sector and I think there, one of the obvious focuses for that concern is on the use of language and the importance of some remedial English language teaching in universities, which as you know, universities are doing now, though I hope that there can be rather greater take- up among students.

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