XN000022-1996-02-07 — Page 55

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Reply:

(c)

(d)

(e)

Mr President,

(a)

whether the Government has provided pre-service and on-the-job training to teachers in the education of gifted children; if so, how many serving teachers have received such training;

what kind of curricula and supplementary resources have been provided by the Government for gifted children; and

whether the Government has any plan to conduct an overall review on the effectiveness of the education currently provided for gifted students, what difficulties have been encountered in the implementation of the existing plan for the education of gifted children, and whether the Government has any long-term strategy for making improvements?

Academically gifted children, as referred to in Education Commission Report No. 4, are those who show exceptional achievement or potential in one or more of the following areas:

(i)

high level of intelligence, as measured on standardised intelligence tests;

(ii) specific academic aptitude in one or more subject areas; or

(iii) high ability in creative thinking.

To ascertain the number of academically gifted pupils in Hong Kong, the Education Department commissioned a study on a sample of 81 primary schools by a team of researchers from the University of Hong Kong, the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the Hong Kong Polytechnic University between 1992 and 1995. The initial findings of the study revealed that around 1,240 pupils or about 2% of the pupils in these schools could be classified as academically gifted. This is in line with the percentage of academically gifted pupils identified in other developed countries. On this basis, we estimate that there are some 20,000 academically gifted pupils aged between 6-18 in Hong Kong.