Chief Secretary Matthew Cheung

Children's growth and development rank high on the policy areas of the current-term Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government. We firmly believe that talent, in particular our future generations, are the most important element for Hong Kong's development. And education is the key to nurturing them. Government expenditure on education is therefore the most meaningful investment for our future.

Since assuming office last year, we have introduced a package of measures that cover education, manpower, funding and hardware, to improve the quality of education. The total education expenditure of the current financial year has been significantly increased by 28.4% and the Government has also reserved HK$3.4 billion recurrent provision for educational use which fully reflects our long-term commitment in education. In fact, in the Policy Address announced just 48 hours ago (October 10), the Chief Executive made it quite clear that education continue to be a very important priority area for the entire Government. We will boost education, for example, by introducing at one go an all-graduate teaching force in all public sector schools in Hong Kong as well as providing a life-wide learning grant of $900 million recurrent expenditure for all public sector schools in Hong Kong.

We have also set up an ongoing, action-oriented and high-level Commission on Children under my chairmanship with cross-bureau and departmental representation to engage the children concern groups in addressing issues that children aged 14 and under may face while growing up. We create strategies and priorities and work to move them into the Government's policy agenda on children.

In fact, this year's Policy Address announced by the Chief Executive two days ago has introduced new measures to strengthen our efforts in ensuring children's healthy growth and development specifically, the Government will launch a pilot scheme in the 2018-19 school year to provide social work services in phases for about 150,000 pre-primary children and their families. We will also set up five specialised co-parenting support centres to provide support to children of separated or divorced families. These are just some of the new measures.

We are determined to make a difference for our children and Hong Kong's future, and I am confident that Hong Kong's future will look as bright as the great big beautiful colouring book today. 

Chief Secretary Matthew Cheung gave these remarks at the opening ceremony of the UBS Mega Art Project: World's Largest Colouring Book on October 12.