teacher training so that the planning of programmes and facilities may be realistically based and take fully into account the changing and developing needs of the industrial context in Hong Kong. Member- ship of this Board should include representation of the Education Department, the Universities, the Polytechnic and informed opinion within industry.
106. Our deliberations concerning the expansion of teacher training facilities to meet the needs created by the expansion of secondary education have led us to recognize that the rate of expansion of teacher training facilities may be severely limited by a shortage of suitable training personnel. Present policy is to select such personnel from among serving officers in the Education Department. This appears to us to limit unnecessarily the field of recruitment and we support the proposal in the White Paper on Education Policy that appointments to posts in Colleges of Education should be by open competitive selection from among experienced teachers.
107. We recommend, therefore, that recruitment to posts in the field of teacher education and training should not be restricted and should be by means of public advertisement.
108. We have so far in this Chapter been primarily concerned with an analysis of the quantitative aspect of the problem of teacher train- ing; we are, however, very conscious of the equal if not greater impor- tance attaching to that aspect of the problem which concerns the quality of such training together with the maintenance and general improvement of overall standards in this field.
109. In view of the need to have continuing regard to both the quantitative and qualitative aspects of teacher training in the coming period of expansion, and to ensure that, at all stages, each of these aspects is given its due weight, it appears to us desirable that suitably constituted machinery be established, perhaps in the form of a Board under the auspices of the Board of Education, with responsibility for studying and making recommendations upon all aspects of teacher education. Such a Board would be able to pay particular attention to local needs and realities. We would recommend that such a Board should give early and close consideration to ways in which the Colleges of Education might explore practical modifications in existing pro- grammes particularly to ensure that teachers, apart from those who may specialize in the teaching of English, would be able to teach through the medium of Chinese.
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