8
EDUCATION AT THE CROSSROADS
community, the profession, the bureaucracy and statutory policy-making bodies. The governance machinery needs to be thoroughly overhauled."
The panel concluded that whichever social and economic path Hong Kong followed it would require greater allocation of staff, buildings and equipment for educational purposes, and that more could be allocated without detracting from other human- welfare services.
Future Prospects
Decisions on the implementation of the Llewellyn Report will ultimately lie with the Governor-in-Council. No attempt is made in this chapter to predict future trends in education policy. However, there are certain educational issues whose importance merits particular attention and to which the government invited the attention of the panel and the other overseas participants at the beginning of the review by posing the following questions:
(a) In what ways should we shape and develop the school system to meet the challenges
of universal basic education?
(b) Are our present educational priorities appropriate?
(c) Is there sufficient access to education and are the various sectors satisfactorily
co-ordinated?
(d) Is the existing role of teachers in the educational system appropriate to their
tasks?
(e) Are the measures concerning language in education now being implemented
sufficient to bring about a rational language situation in schools?
(f) Is sufficient emphasis being placed in our development plans on adult and con-
tinuing education?
L
Each of these themes gave rise to related observations and questions which are set out below:
Universal Basic Education
In 1981 the first cohort of pupils completed the nine-year course of basic compulsory education. Problems associated with the response of the less able to compulsory schooling have begun to take root in junior secondary schools and to cause concern among school authorities. School education in Hong Kong is still very formal by present-day standards and parental preference is markedly in favour of academic education of the type characteristic of the traditional grammar school. Technical education is gaining favour but is no less rigorous in its demands on the pupil: technical subjects are quite properly offered not as easy options for the less able but rather as part of a co-ordinated curriculum which attempts to encourage the development of the whole person through complementary intellectual and practical skills. Schools are finding it difficult to identify and meet the needs of pupils who are not academically inclined.
Part of the problem undoubtedly lies in the rapid pace at which the public-sector school system has recently expanded: the system has in a sense outrun itself. Early attempts were made by the Curriculum Development Committee to address the problem by issuing flexible syllabuses built around a common core and allowing adaptation within schools to the needs of particular groups of pupils. This proved to be only moderately successful for various reasons: the resources available for curriculum development have been limited; schools have been hard pressed for sufficient space and facilities to diversify the curriculum; teachers have had insufficient experience of less able pupils at this level to be able to
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