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Programme improvements for Chinese immigrant children

The Education Department is seeking service enhancement for Chinese immigrant children by reducing class sizes in induction courses, producing a self- learning package on English and reviewing longer term requirements to assess how induction programmes can be further improved.

The Assistant Director of Education (Services), Mr David Pun, said the department had reduced the class size from 15 to 20 to 10 to 15 per class in respect of induction programmes for children who had newly arrived from China.

"Wherever applicable, we are also implementing split class teaching for age groups 6 to 10 and 11 to 14," he said.

"This will considerably reduce the instances in which teachers have to tackle significant differences in standards of pupils in the same class."

In addition, Mr Pun said the department would produce a self-learning package on English for self-study by these children at home.

"This package will be distributed through non-profit-making voluntary agencies and schools," he said.

Mr Pun emphasised that the induction and extended programmes for Chinese immigrant children were meant to complement rather than to replace formal schooling.

He said: "There is a wide range of support services in schools available to Chinese immigrant children, among which is remedial teaching in the subjects of English, Chinese and Mathematics.

"However, having operated the induction programmes for a year, we will conduct a review of the longer term requirements starting this month to assess how they can be further improved."

At present, a total of 19 non-profit-making voluntary agencies provide induction and extended programmes for newly arrived Chinese immigrant children in 46 centres all over Hong Kong. The courses are free of charge.