Education | 175
The VTC provides full-time pre-employment education and training courses, industry-wide training schemes and a voluntary trade testing and certification scheme. It has also set up a self-funded Continuing Professional Development Centre to provide short courses and organise professional examinations.
Altogether, some 138 000 full-time and part-time places were available during 2004 for both school leavers and people in employment.
Technical Training
The Construction Industry Training Authority provides training for the construction industry. It operates three construction training centres as well as a management training centre, a trade testing centre and a safety training centre. The Authority is funded by a levy of 0.4 per cent on the value of all construction works exceeding $1 million. It offered 3 669 full-time and 64 097 part-time training places in the 2004-05 training year. The Authority also conducts trade tests for construction workers to assess the standards of skills achieved, and certification tests for operators of construction plants.
The Clothing Industry Training Authority provides training courses for the clothing and footwear industries. It is financed by a levy of 0.03 per cent on the Free- on-Board value of clothing and footwear items produced in and exported from Hong Kong. It operates two training centres to deliver both full-time and part-time courses at technician and craftsman levels. In 2004-05, the Authority provided training to 458 full-time and 4 338 part-time students.
Five skills centres, three run by the VTC and two by non-governmental organisations, prepare people with a disability for open employment or mainstream vocational education and technical training. Collectively, they provide 1 222 full-time places, 360 of them residential, for the 2004-05 training year.
Post-secondary Education
The Chief Executive announced in his 2000 Policy Address that 60 per cent of the 17-20 age group should have access to post-secondary education by the 2010-11 school year. To provide the impetus, the Government offers interest-free start-up loans, accreditation grants and land to providers of post-secondary education and financial assistance for students.
In 2004-05, around 190 full-time accredited self-financing programmes are offered by 20 post-secondary institutions, providing some 18 300 full-time places at sub-degree level or above. These are in addition to some 9 400 publicly funded places at sub-degree level offered by the City University of Hong Kong, the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, the Hong Kong Institute of Education, the VTC and the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts.
Higher Education
Hong Kong has 12 degree-awarding higher education institutions, eight of which are publicly funded through the University Grants Committee (UGC). The other four not funded by the UGC are the publicly funded Hong Kong Academy for
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