Schools should not receive funds based only on their academic performance, Education Commission Professor Rosie Young Tse-tse told legislators yesterday. The commission has invited comments from the public about the quality of schools. Although the public was asked whether funding should be related to performance in a commission pamphlet last week, 'Quality School Education - Ways To Improve Performance', Professor Young told yesterday's Legco education panel that the commission was not suggesting bombarding schools with money to make them improve their performance. 'We don't have a final proposal to peg funding with performance so far,' she said. Democratic Party legislator Dr Yeung Sum worried that pegging funding to performance would mean a large part of the limited resources would go to better schools, while others would never get enough money to help improve performance. Professor Young said: 'We are not saying schools with more straight-As students would have more funding. A more fair way is to look at the standards of the students in a particular school when they got in, and then look at how much they have improved when they graduate.' She said during the consultation the public would be asked how relating funding to performance could be done equitably. The current six-week consultation, which will end next month, is the first part of a two-phase exercise for preparing the Education Commission Report No. 7. Based on the opinions gathered in the current exercise, the commission will publish a consultation document on the report for an extensive consultation in the second phase in the autumn.
