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Following is a transcript of remarks by the Secretary for Education, Mr Eddie Ng Hak-kim, at a media session after officiating at a time capsule dedication ceremony "Commitment for a Better Future" conducted by the Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority today (September 21):
Secretary for Education: To follow up on the major amendment announcement of the policy on Moral and National Education made by the Chief Executive in the evening of September 8, the Education Bureau has amended accordingly the particular circular memorandum to all the schools at the operational level dated May 15 this year. The major amendments have already been uploaded to our website and distributed. So if you would like to go into the details, please make reference to that particular uploaded version.
However, here I would like to make two particular highlights. The first one is under the amended policy, the arrangement requiring the full implementation of the Moral and National Education subject in the 2015/16 school year for primary schools and 2016/17 school year for secondary schools, at the end of their respective three-year "initiation period", is abolished. That is the first point. School sponsoring bodies and schools can, in accordance with their vision and mission, schools' readiness and professional judgment, exercise their discretion in deciding how to handle Moral and National Education-related matters, including whether to develop the Moral and National Education subject, whether to implement the programme as an independent subject, as well as the implementation modes and schedule. These are all at the discretion of the school sponsoring bodies and schools.
The second point, the school sponsoring bodies and the schools may also, building upon what they have done so far, enhance their learning and teaching strategies and resources according to the programme such as values education, life education, knowing more about the country, civic education, sustainable development education, sex education, and etc. With any of those related subjects, they can use $530,000 for those purposes at the discretion of the schools.
Reporter: ...$530,000 available to schools if the subject...
Secretary for Education: The $530,000 has already been issued to all the schools. With the amended version of the policy, the school sponsoring bodies and the schools are free to decide how to use the money on all these particular Moral and National Education related areas and services.
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)
Ends/Friday, September 21, 2012
Issued at HKT 20:47
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