TNAG-1073-FCO40-1323-Policy-of-the-Government-of-Hong-Kong-on-education-including-1981 — Page 353

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determinants of the quality of education are of course the strengths and

weaknesses of teachers, and most of the effort made during the past two

decades to improve quality has been directed towards teachers by such

measures as improved initial training, greater opportunity for refresher

training and more comprehensive advisory services. But teachers too are

subject to social pressures: schools have to respond to parental expectations

and these are not always conducive to sound educational practice.

2.4

While acknowledging the inevitability of this situation, given

the present circumstances and those of the recent past (with illegal

immigration having created problems of provision, particularly in the

secondary sector of education), the government believes that the stage has

now been reached at which many of the root causes of unreasonable pressure

can be gradually eliminated or at least more satisfactorily controlled,

and this is one of the principal aims of the proposals contained in the

1980 Green Paper on Primary Education and Pre-primary Services (detailed

elsewhere). Of particular importance among the proposals are those designed

specifically to reduce competition: such measures as the proposed control

of primary school entry should provide the positive support without which

healthier attitudes to education are unlikely to develop and qualitative

improvements to have a tangible and lasting effect. It is also hoped that

the current review of tertiary education will reinforce these measures at

the upper end of the system through the consideration of university growth

rates in the light of changing social and economic demand and through the

development of a post-secondary system at once more diversified and more

closely integrated than at present.

Language in education

7.5

One of the most difficult and controversial current issues in

Hong Kong education is the place of language in the school system and its

effect on the quality of education at all levels. There are two distinct

but interrelated problems - the quality of language teaching and (as