XN000022-1995-10-12 — Page 51

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Turning to kindergarten education, Mr Wong said the Government would conduct a review on the Kindergarten Subsidy Scheme introduced this September and expect to complete the review by mid-1996.

"We will continue to upgrade teacher quality by requiring at least 40 per cent of the teachers in each kindergarten to have completed the advanced course by September 1997," he said.

On Government's policy to encourage schools to use mother-tongue as the medium of instruction, Mr Wong stressed Government's existing policy of encouraging schools to adopt Chinese as the medium of instruction through the provision of additional support, including additional teachers.

"At the same time, we are going to prove that the results of students using Chinese as the medium of instruction are in fact better than comparable children using English as the medium of instruction," he said.

In 1994-95, the Education Department started a three-year research project to find out the effects of using different medium of instruction on students' results.

Based on the findings from this project, the Education Department will issue in 1997-98 firm guidance to schools on which language they should adopt as the medium of instruction.

For disabled children and other school children who might need to be provided actively with special education, Mr Wong said the Government had been implementing a series of support measures, including the strengthening of the various counselling services in schools, building 10 practical and skills opportunity schools, developing gifted children.

Noting that the Board of Education had set up a working group to conduct a comprehensive review on the needs of disabled children, Mr Wong said the recommendations from the Board would form an important basis for considering improvements to special education.

Other new initiatives in the education programme include:

* To introduce the Target Oriented Curriculum- which has been adopted by over 70 schools in their Primary One classes- to all primary school classes by September 2000.