The Education Bureau is in the process of coming up with a comprehensive funding scheme to support secondary students who have special needs. Francis Yu Shing-ip, the bureau's principal inspector for special education, said his team had recently visited 50 secondary schools to find out how they catered for students with special needs, including those with autism, dyslexia and mental developmental delays. 'Secondary students have different needs from primary school pupils,' he said. 'We want to help schools do better.' While assistance in primary schools often came in the form of counselling to help such children keep their emotions under control, more attention would be given to improving the academic performance of such students in secondary schools. Mr Yu said the bureau was working on a funding scheme but had yet to decide whether to adopt the model for primary schools, under which special-needs students receive per capita subsidies of HK$10,000 to HK$20,000. Currently, a mere 37 mainstream secondary schools enrolling special needs students obtain systematic government support, including extra teachers and assistants and funding. For the remaining 400-odd secondary schools, neither extra teaching staff nor specific funding arrangements are available. The only help available to these schools is funding for equipment to help visually- or hearing-impaired or physically handicapped students. The bureau, meanwhile, offers teacher training, has assigned mainstream and special schools to assist others and provides help to schools failing to deal with urgent cases. Andrew Tse Chung-yee, of the Centre for Advancement in Special Education at the University of Hong Kong, said a co-ordinator for special education should be assigned to each secondary school and courses should be organised for school administrators on how to deploy resources effectively.
