Educators have welcomed CY Leung's proposals to study the feasibility of offering 15-years of free education and provide extra funding for SEN (special educational needs) students. There was disappointment, however, that there will be no change in the policy to pay kindergarten teachers according to their former salary scale, which was wiped out under the previous administration.

Speaking at a press conference after delivering his first Policy Address on Wednesday, the Chief Executive said a study of how best to fund kindergartens is essential. Under the existing system, each has different expenses, teacher salaries and school fees.

Chanel Fung Kit-ho, assistant professor in the Department of Educational Psychology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), said she was happy to hear that 735 kindergartens under the Pre-primary Education Voucher Scheme will be given a one-off grant of HK$150,000-HK$250,000 in the 2013-14 school year to improve their premises and facilities. She said the grant is large enough that kindergartens will be able to provide children with better services.

Fung argued, however, that the voucher scheme would not serve to improve quality of teaching in kindergartens but would have the effect of diminishing standards, while fulfilling the expectations of parents who believe "the more homework the better".

"All kindergartens are market-oriented and parents are the market. The idea of free preschool education may be a way out for kindergartens tied down by parents' demands. They can focus on developing teaching materials they see fit, without worrying too much about whether they are popular among parents," Fung said.

She added that the failure to restore the old pay scale mechanism for kindergarten teachers means that eventually the teachers will move on and the government would be wasting money upgrading teachers' qualification.

Ho Fuk-chuen, director of Centre for Special Needs and Studies in Inclusive Education at the Hong Kong Institute of Education, welcomed the government's additional funding to enlarge the percentage of teachers in ordinary schools taking professional training from 10 percent to 15 percent, while providing a one-off grant for aided special schools to procure technology based teaching aids.

"I would say the government has improved the picture but of course, the larger the percentage the better," Ho remarked, adding that schools should set up a SEN coordinator, to look after special needs students.

The administration aims to cultivate arts and culture through allocation of additional resources to arts groups and to train more arts administrators.

But Oscar Ho Hing-kay, MA programme director at CUHK's Cultural Management school, expressed the fear that the Arts Capacity Development Funding Scheme, a matching grant program, will benefit only the larger arts organization with popular followings and which are able to readily find sponsors. As a result, medium and small organizations can hardly hope to develop due to "inequality," he complained.

Ho is particularly concerned about the quality control over the new arts administration courses in the next five years. "We see the demand is huge, but we need to guarantee the quality."

mingyeung@chinadailyhk.com

(HK Edition 01/17/2013 page1)