Date:
Time:
25.11.86
2.15
5 pm
Reporter:
PMS
1
the public, and this is true.
11
However, in the context of the '78
2 White Paper the Government of course have also a number of measures
3 which the Government wish to introduce beyond 1978. For example,
4
5
6
7
9
10
in the debate on the Green Paper prior to 1978 there was in fact a
strong request for 11 years of free education up to Form V and this
in fact was a very important factor to bear in mind. Now after the
'78 White Paper the Government since has initiated a number of
8 changes which have given us the reason why we did not pursue this
particular bit on recovering fees, recovering costs for fees. The
most important factor was of course the overseas review of the
visitors from overseas to look at the system of Hong Kong overall. The visitors from overseas came in 1981. They produced a report in '82. This report recommended among other things the establishment of a commission to look at education policies across the board having
regard to resources available. The commission was established in
1984. It produced a report in October of that year and that report
was approved by Government in January 1985.
11
12
13
Y
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
Y
23
ng.
24
25
ked
26
and
27
her
28
ve-
29
30
31
is
32
33
34
35
uld
36
by
The reason why I said all this is because during all the time there was public debate on whether the Government should have
11 years of free education up to Form V and this explains why the
Government should not, and indeed cannot proceed with revising fees in senior secondary in this regard, the public expectations, that
11 years of free education could be a possibility. Indeed to do so
would be quite irresponsible of Government, to raise fees while
public debate was still going on, on 11 years of education, would be quite irresponsible. And therefore the Government fully recognised this and have deferred the revision of senior secondary fees with a view to waiting for the panel's report and the commission's report prior to deciding on fees in relation to educational policy changes.
Now in the event, with hindsight 11 years of education was
not,
or free education was not recommended. It only recommended 11
years of subsidised education, so after that we did immediately start
the review of fees in January '85 which then resulted in the revision
of fees now implemented in September '86. This explains the background
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.