TNAG-1073-FCO40-1323-Policy-of-the-Government-of-Hong-Kong-on-education-including-1981 — Page 188

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The Hong Kong Education System

Chapter 2

Characteristics of the Education System

This chapter identifies and briefly describes those features

of Hong Kong education which have given the system its characteristic

shape and direction. These will be more clearly seen against a brief

background sketch of the development of primary and secondary education.

since the end of World War II.

2.2

When the war ended in 1945, school enrolment was

under 50,000. School buildings lay in ruins, equipment had been

destroyed, textbooks were almost non-existent and there was a serious

shortage of trained teachers. The process of rehabilitating the school

system was laborious and difficult. The enormous growth of the school

system since then (it now caters for about 1.4 million pupils) began in

1949, when immigrants from China began to arrive in tens of thousands.

With a predominantly young and rapidly growing population it was clear

that a massive school building programme was called for and that the

foremost priority was the development of primary education and teacher

training. Extensive government building programmes were launched in

the 1950s: at their peak about 45,000 primary school places were being

added each year. In 1965 the White Paper Education Policy announced

the reorganisation of the structure of primary and secondary education,

set universal primary education as the immediate aim and established

the principle that expansion of school education would henceforth be

through the aided sector wherever possible.

2.3

There was considerable consolidation and enhancement of

educational provision in the 1960s and early 1970s: for example, improved

programmes of teacher education were introduced in the colleges of

education, with the restructuring of initial training courses and their