ENG-1988 — Page 177

EDUCATION

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Altogether 3 856 students went to Britain during the school year 1987-8; 3 808 went to Canada, 4 215 to the United States and 3 147 to Australia.

British Council

The aims of the British Council in Hong Kong are to promote an enduring understanding of Britain, its language, its education and its culture and to encourage the interchange of persons.

As far as the English language is concerned, the council's English Language Centre ran courses for 26 000 Hong Kong residents, held a summer school for 6 000 secondary school students, ran a summer school refresher course for 150 secondary school teachers and held a conference on developing and testing language skills for another 160 secondary school teachers. In addition one Royal Society of Arts diploma and two Royal Society of Arts certificate courses in teaching English as a foreign language to adults were conducted.

Off-site business English courses were organised for a variety of organisations and several other contracts with similar firms were in the pipeline. The council has two contracts with the Education Department to bring some 80 expatriate teachers of English to work in Hong Kong schools and to send a similar numbers of Chinese teachers of English to the United Kingdom.

The council's English Language Centre, in conjunction with RTHK, also started teaching English by radio this year and ran a jointly-sponsored scholarship scheme to send outstanding students, business executives and a journalist to the United Kingdom on four-week courses.

The promotion of British education is done by the Educational Counselling Services and by the Education Promotion Service. These services gave advice and assistance to 8 000 students seeking admission to British institutes of higher education in 1988. Two missions from British universities and polytechnics representing some 60 institutions visited Hong Kong during the year.

Council-sponsored visitors to Hong Kong came from a wide variety of disciplines including physical education, music, law, literature, fine arts, building use and safety research, socio-linguistics, and English language teaching. The council also sent leading academics and language teachers for familiarisation visits and courses to the United Kingdom from Hong Kong.

Through its Arts Programme, the council seeks to further the understanding and appreciation of British arts in Hong Kong and to develop closer links with local arts organisations. It organised, sponsored and co-sponsored many arts events, especially in the areas of visual and performing arts. Perhaps the most notable events were the Sadler's Wells Royal Ballet, the English Shakespeare Company, the London Festival Orchestra, a Monty Python Film Week and 'The Elusive Sign' - British Avant Garde Film and Video 1977-87.

The council's library represents all aspects of British life and culture, though the emphasis is on English language teaching and teacher training. There is also a film and video library covering a wide range of topics. Exhibitions held in the library in 1988 included one to celebrate the centenary of the birth of T. S. Eliot and two concerned with 'English through Microcomputers' and 'Learning with Computers'. Library membership is open to all Hong Kong residents.

The council celebrated its 40th year in Hong Kong in 1988, and intends to continue to maintain and expand its activities here for the foreseeable future.