The Education Commission recently endorsed changing the secondary school system from the five years plus two years structure to a three-year junior secondary plus three-year senior secondary structure. It also supported changing the present three-year university degree programmes to four years.
The commission suggests that the secondary school system should change by 2010, the degree programme be revised by 2013 and that the government should announce its decision on the issue by 2006-2007 at the latest.
To cope with the change, the government would have to build 34 new secondary schools and employ 1,500 extra teachers, involving an initial outlay of $11 billion and recurrent expenditure of $3.8 billion.
The reform measures represent the demands of Hong Kong's education workers.
Under the proposed secondary school system, there will be one less open examination, thereby reducing the pressure on students.
It will also remove the existing bottleneck between Form 5 and Form 6. At present, just more than one third of Form 5 graduates can secure government-subsidised Form 6 places.
