TNAG-0795-FCO40-999-Policy-of-Government-of-Hong-Kong-on-education-1978 — Page 131

(iii) the likely manpower demand for persons of a good general education or with special qualifications, and the capacity of the

economy to provide satisfactory and rewarding employment for such highly educated people.

The decline of the 17-19 year old population that has been noted in paragraph 4.1 will of itself increase substantially the opportunities to proceed to the sixth form and to tertiary education and this factor must also be taken into account when deciding on the rate of expansion in the number of subsidised places.

5.6

The extent of demand for places in tertiary education is difficult to assess. Most full-time courses at all publicly-subvented tertiary institutions are over- subscribed, though the extent of "multiple applications" is not known. As noted in Chapter 7, the technical institutes have experienced difficulty in filling places on some of their part-time day courses, and some such problems have been encountered also at the Polytechnic.

5.7

Tertiary education courses vary considerably in their nature and standard, and it will usually be for the appropriate authorities to decide on the academic qualifications required of the students they admit. It would usually be difficult to regard students with a lower performance in the Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination than five subjects at least at grade 'E' as having demonstrated their fitness for further full-time academic study, and for some courses at least three subjects at grade 'C' may be necessary. Using a cohort analysis of the Primary 6 population of March 1971, only some 27% proceeded to score five 'E''s or better and only some 8.5% three 'C''s or better in the 1976 HKCE. Having regard to the substantial increase during the 1980's in the number of tertiary education places in relation to the population in the age group, some improvement must occur in the standard of students' attainment upon completing Form V if existing standards of admission to tertiary education are to be maintained. However, a wider range of students, including some of those who were not able to achieve good results in an examination such as the HKCE, may be able to pursue successfully a course of part-time technical or other vocationally-related education that is associated with job experience.

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