A PLAN to have two expatriate English teachers for every secondary school will take twice as long to complete as estimated because of insufficient funding.
The proposal, in Education Commission Report No 6, faced a setback yesterday when the Financial Secretary said funding would be provided for the recruitment of only 100 native English teachers.
The commission had suggested expanding the expatriate English teachers scheme to all 400 secondary schools in four years by recruiting an extra 200 staff a year.
There are at present 61 teachers whose first language is English.
Mr Tsang said $29.1 million on a full-year basis had been earmarked to fund the recruitment of about 100 teachers from September.
The money would also be used to expand intensive English-language courses for an additional 11,300 matriculation students.
The Financial Secretary said Hong Kong would not be able to maintain its position as an international centre for trade and finance if language skills were allowed to slip.
