Principals of elite schools pledged yesterday to make use of the maximum quota in selecting their own students.
Belilios Public School, a government school in Tin Hau, will hold its own entrance exam to select the top students to fill 30 per cent of the discretionary places as proposed by the Education Commission. 'I will make use of the 30 per cent to admit the highest-scoring students in our own entrance test on Chinese, English and mathematics,' principal Agnes Wong Li Shuen-pui said.
Ms Wong said she could not see how remedial measures could help narrow the gap between students as suggested by the Education Commission.'If there is a mix of abilities among students in a class, the teacher will have to teach to the lowest standard to fit the worst-performing students,' she said.
She also feared the reduction in banding from five to three in 2001/02 would mean the school's performance would slip as it currently only enrols band one students. 'It's going to be very difficult for teachers to deal with students with different levels of abilities,' she said.
Yik Kwan, deputy principal of La Salle College in Kowloon Tong, said: 'It's acceptable to teach students from band one to three. But students in band five would definitely have problems catching up. It's a wrong direction to broaden the banding since some students are smarter and some are not.' To compensate for the fact that secondary schools will have to admit students from a wider range of abilities, the proportion of discretionary admissions will be raised from the current 15 per cent to 20 per cent in 2001/02 and to 30 per cent in 2005/06 with the remainder centrally allocated.
Tso Kai-lok, a member of the Education Commission, said that the widening of the discretionary allocation to 30 per cent was aimed at redressing the imbalance in the quality of primary school pupils. 'In Primary One, 85 per cent of school places are to be filled by central allocation. In turn, secondary schools have to take in students with a wider mix of abilities,' he said.