already well established in the curriculum at the junior secondary level and the Director of Education will consider the most suitable arrangements to be made for senior secondary students. The principal alternatives would appear to be to make facilities available in a convenient centre for use by students outside school hours or to encourage certain schools to specialise in the teaching of Music.
6.4
As the number of subsidised places in Forms IV and V expands to the targets noted in Chapter 4, students from a wider spectrum of ability will have to be provided for than was the case in the past. The development of new subjects within the curriculum will enable students of different aptitudes to be provided for, though the nature of the course should continue to be geared to the needs of the abler section of the population who are capable of satisfactory performance in the Certificate of Education Examination.
6.5
The range of subjects in the Certificate of Education Examination has already been extended. The Government considers that the present standard of the examination is appropriate to Hong Kong's requirements, in particular the higher grades, i.e. grades A-E, which are used in the selection of students for entry to the sixth form and to tertiary education and by Government and industry in the selection of new employees. The Government considers that this is not the right time to develop a second examination, such as the Certificate of Secondary Education (CSE) in England and Wales, which would be pitched at a lower standard of ability, though if during the 1980's there are substantial numbers of students who are not able to cope with the HKCE, then this possibility should be considered. The recently-established Hong Kong Examinations Authority will be asked to keep these matters under review.
6.6
The Government believes that only students who are fitted for an exacting academic course should be admitted to the sixth form. Until there is better experience in local circumstances in the use of aptitude testing, the best measure of a student's fitness to proceed to a sixth form course would usually be his performance in the Certificate of Education Examination. The Government would propose that even with the expansion of sixth form places the normal minimum entry standard for a sixth form education should be the attainment of grade 'C' in at least three subjects in that examination. (At the present time students admitted to the sixth form in subsidised schools are usually required to have a higher standard of attainment.)
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