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5 pm
Date:
25.11.86
Time:
2.15
Reporter:
PMS
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to your question.
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MR LEE:
I will follow up with a further question.
Whether or not it was considered appropriate for the Education
Department to have continued with the practice of proposing increases
in school fees, only in the context of major changes in educational policy, such as in 1979 it follows a major policy change of nine years
of compulsory education and perhaps this year, in 1986, a decision to abolish the JSEA, that sort of policy changes. And whether or not
the then Secretaries for Education and Manpower had misunderstood or
overlooked the policy guideline of the 1978 White Paper. And earlier
on, Mr Leung, you mentioned that the delay of review of fees was due
to an overall review in secondary education and a possibility of 11
14 years of free education, but that would not affect 6th Form fees, for
example, because 11 years would not include the 6th Form.
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D of E:
Mr Chairman, if I could respond to that.
I think it is very true that we did have regard to the criteria in the '78 White Paper but the report of the overseas panel and the commission report did cover a wide range of subjects in education, in fact from primary upwards to Form VI. And it is in fact important that we should not revise fees in senior secondary independent of
23 fees in, say, for example Form VI or even in fact post-secondary.
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Now I do not agree that we do not have a policy on fees. We do have a policy on fees, this is in relation to policy changes in education. It may be historical but it is a policy and I accept that of course in future we might have to revise fees separately and regularly so as not to forget about inflation and so on and this is
something we have to look forward to in the future. But talking about the past is simply to be wise after the event. In the past we did
very consciously look at policy across the board and then decide on fees in relation to policy changes. So I am afraid this is something 34 which we were quite clear about and we do not agree they were not
inconsistent. They were entirely consistent with our policy.
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No comments yet.
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