Plea for career-oriented courses

Universities will defeat the purpose of the education reforms if they don't accept career-oriented courses as electives, a school principal has warned.

The courses in subjects such as business management and law aim to cater for more vocationally oriented students and are part of the menu of educational choices being prepared for students in the new senior secondary curriculum.

William Yip Kam-yuen, chairman of the Secondary School Heads Association, said: 'This is one of the proposals to provide a more diversified pathway for senior secondary studies. Students have a wide range of interests. Some are more academically inclined and some are more career-oriented. It is good to treat these two extremes as equivalent in terms of university general entrance requirements.

'If universities don't accept career-oriented courses as electives for admission purposes, it would defeat the whole purpose of the education reforms because it would prevent the widening of access to university.'

Mr Yip said about 100 schools already offered career-oriented studies in Forms Four and Five and had trained teachers and invested time to develop them.

'If career-oriented courses are considered as one of the electives, many more schools will be happy to offer career-oriented studies,' he said. 'But if they don't count as an elective, I think schools may not consider offering career-oriented courses. Students and teachers may not be happy about that.'