The Hong Kong Institute of Education has won a victory in its campaign to restore places for arts, music and physical education teaching courses in its 2008-09 bachelors of secondary education programmes.
Overturning plans to cut to zero the intake for next year's secondary education courses in arts, music and physical education offered by the HKIEd, the University Grants Committee this week told the institute it could restore up to 40 places for the three subjects.
However, a spokeswoman for the committee said the quota would have to be made up by transferring places from the institute's Chinese, English and mathematics courses to PE and arts education programmes.
The decision was made, she said, having considered difficulties in attracting students to the postgraduate diploma in education in PE and arts education and accounting for 'the views of the institutions'.
The institute launched a campaign to fight the cuts after the Education and Manpower Bureau notified its senior management in June last year, in a 'start letter' outlining the bureau's recommendations for intake numbers for 2008. The intake for primary education in the three subjects was unaffected.
Last week, the Zero Quota Concern Group delivered 3,000 letters of support to the offices of the UGC.
The EMB had said the suggestion of a zero quota resulted from a projected oversupply of teachers in 2012 as a result of the change to a junior secondary-senior secondary system.
