Curriculum Development

Curriculum Development Council

The Curriculum Development Council (CDC) is an advisory body that makes recommendations to the Government on all matters relating to school curriculum development from kindergarten to senior secondary forms. Its membership includes heads of schools, practising teachers, parents, employers, academics from tertiary institutions, professionals from related fields or related bodies, representatives from the Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority and the Vocational Training Council, as well as officers from the Education and Manpower Bureau.

Curriculum

The school curriculum in Hong Kong is defined in terms of the five essential learning experiences, i.e. moral and civic education, intellectual development, community service, physical and aesthetic development and career-related experiences for lifelong learning and whole-person development of students. Henceforth, all students are entitled to the five learning experiences that correspond to ethics, intellect, physique, social skills and aesthetics.

In 2001, the CDC developed an open, coherent and flexible curriculum framework that enables students to meet the challenges of a knowledge-based society. The framework is composed of three interconnected components: Key Learning Areas¹, Generic Skills² and Values and Attitudes³. The Key Learning Areas serve as the major knowledge domain of subjects providing contexts for the development of generic skills and values and attitudes. By making use of the curriculum framework, schools are now offering their students a broad and balanced curriculum.

The school curriculum is sufficiently diversified, providing students at all levels with a variety of options to cater for their different aptitudes, abilities and learning needs. The orientation of the subjects under the relevant key learning areas could be academic, social, practical and/or vocational at the appropriate level of schooling.

Information Technology in Education

The Government launched the Five-year Strategy on Information Technology (IT) in Education in 1998 to enhance students' access to IT and the Internet, provide training and support for all teachers, use IT to support teaching in the school curriculum, and foster a community-wide culture that helps promote IT in education. By the end of 2003, all schools had been provided with the necessary IT infrastructure and had broadband connection to the Internet, with over 60 per cent of them having fibre access and enjoying 10 to 100 megabytes-per-second bandwidth. By August, all teachers had completed IT training at different levels. Professional support for schools in the application of IT in education had been strengthened.

To support primary schools in implementing IT learning targets set in the curriculum, a computer awareness programme has been developed. The Curriculum Reform has reinforced the role of IT as a tool to support the reform measures. In the past years, the Education and Manpower Bureau assumed the dual role of forerunner and facilitator in the production of curriculum resources for IT education.

Supported by the Quality Education Fund, the Hong Kong Education City (HKEdCity) was launched in August 2000 to promote quality education and IT for lifelong and life-wide learning. It quickly became one of the most popular education portals in Hong Kong with over 1.3 million registered users and an average daily hit rate reaching about three million. The HKEdCity was corporatised in 2002 and continues to receive support from the Government to develop into an e-learning and e-business platform for teachers, parents and students. In 2003, the HKEdCity improved its IT infrastructure and search engine. It also continued to build partnerships with various entities and improve its web services.

During the year, expositions, activities and competitions continued to be held to promote community participation in the use of IT in education. Tertiary institutions conducted various studies to evaluate the pedagogical and other impacts of IT in education. The Government is reviewing the overall effectiveness of the first five-year strategy and mapping out the direction of the next five-year strategy.

Language Education

The Standing Committee on Language Education and Research (SCOLAR) was set up in 1996 to advise the Government on language education issues in general. The Standing Committee identifies research and development projects necessary for the enhancement of language proficiency, and advises the Trustee of the Language Fund on the policy and procedures governing the operation of the fund, which was set up in 1994. By year-end, the Language Fund had disbursed about $756.8 million for 283 approved projects aimed at enhancing the language proficiency of the population. These language learning, public education, resource development, teacher training and research projects are conducted by a range of organisations, including local tertiary institutions, post-secondary colleges, schools, educational and professional bodies and government departments.

Native-speaking English Teacher Scheme

The Native-speaking English Teacher (NET) Scheme has been implemented in all public sector secondary schools since 1998. It was extended to government-funded primary schools in 2002. In addition to teaching, NETs also help change teaching practices by working with local English teachers to make the learning of English more interesting. At present, about 470 NETs are serving in secondary schools, and some 310 in primary schools. Primary schools that were not allocated a NET are provided with a grant for hiring native-speaking English Language Teaching Assistants.