ENG-1983 — Page 112

EDUCATION

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The expansion of special education has necessitated an increased effort in the training of specialist staff. Overseas training is provided for the specialist staff of the Special Education Section and local in-service training courses are run for teachers in special schools and classes. In September, the responsibility for operating these courses for teachers of all types of handicapped children was transferred from the Special Education Section to the Sir Robert Black College of Education. The Special Education Section continues to organise short courses, seminars and workshops for teachers of students with special educational needs in ordinary schools and for trainee teachers at colleges of education, as well as to run refresher courses for teachers in special schools and special classes.

The conversion work for an earmould laboratory at the Special Education Services Centre in Kowloon was completed in late 1983 and the Education Department is now able to provide custom-made earmoulds for hearing-impaired children as recommended in the 1981 Rehabilitation Programme Plan Review. =

Post Secondary Education

There are two post-secondary colleges the Hong Kong Shue Yan College and Lingnan College - registered under the Post Secondary Colleges Ordinance. The Hong Kong Shue Yan College, registered in 1976, has three faculties - arts, social science and commerce. The college has 13 departments offering day and evening courses with an enrolment of 3 320 students. It operates its four-year diploma programme without government financial assistance. Lingnan College, registered in October 1978, has two faculties arts and business and an enrolment of 984 students. It offers advanced level studies and two years of post sixth-form study, for which it receives government financial assistance, and a fifth year end-on course.

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The Hong Kong Baptist College, which was registered in 1970 as an approved post secondary college, has since November 1983 been registered under a separate ordinance and now comes under the auspices of the University and Polytechnic Grants Committee.

Various student financial assistance schemes are made available by the government to post sixth-form students at the registered post-secondary colleges. Some private day and evening schools, registered under the Education Ordinance, offer post-secondary courses of varying standards. None of these receives aid from the government.

Higher Education

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In determining policies in higher education, the government takes advice from the University and Polytechnic Grants Committee (UPGC), which also provides specific expert and impartial advice on grants to individual institutions. The UPGC also enables the institutions to maintain their autonomy, an increasingly important factor as various government departments identify manpower requirements for social programmes, leading to requests for additional graduates in, for example, medicine, education and social work.

In 1983 further progress was made towards carrying out the expansion, agreed in 1982, of opportunities for degree level education in Hong Kong. The policy is to provide first year degree places for six per cent of the 17-20 age group by 1990 and eight per cent by the mid-1990s. The UPGC and the institutions are drawing up proposals for development up to 1988, by which time the Hong Kong Baptist College and the new City Polytechnic of Hong Kong should have become well established alongside the University of Hong Kong, the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the Hong Kong Polytechnic, all providing opportunities for school leavers to pursue higher education.