XN000022-1996-04-03 — Page 54

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This explains why education has always been the single largest item of Government spending. It will continue to account for over 20 percent of Government's proposed recurrent expenditure for 1996-97.

Let me emphasise one important point: this Budget makes sufficient provision for implementing all the new initiatives in education announced in our 1995 Policy Commitments. But we should also not overlook our ambitious programme of ongoing improvements in:

enhancing teacher education through the courses offered by the Hong Kong Institute of Education and other institutions;

providing additional graduate teacher posts in primary schools;

assisting schools with a high proportion of low achievers;

supporting the schooling of new immigrant children from China and their integration into our education system;

extending the Target Oriented Curriculum to all primary schools;

converting existing bi-sessional schools into whole-day operation;

improving the teaching and learning environment in existing schools through the School Improvement Programme;

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phasing out the floating classes in secondary schools;

and in many other areas which are familiar to Members and which I need not repeat here.

On special education, I would like to reiterate that we will consider carefully the outcome of the review undertaken by the Board of Education when it is completed in the middle of the year.

But we are far from complacent. We act swiftly to tackle problems and address particular concerns. I want to give two examples. First, it was only last month that the Education Commission published its Final Report No. 6 on enhancing language proficiency. Not only have we accepted all its recommendations, we have also set aside the necessary resources in the Budget to implement the phase one programme.