Eighty-two percent of all serving language teachers fully or partially meet qualification requirements recommended by the Standing Committee on Language Education & Research, Secretary for Education & Manpower Professor Arthur Li says.

In breakdowns, 94.5% of primary school Chinese language teachers, 61.3% of primary English language teachers, 86.8% of secondary school Chinese teachers and 84.3% of secondary English teachers fully or partially meet the requirements.

Professor Li told legislators today that to encourage more serving teachers to upgrade their qualifications, the committee allocated $225 million from the Language Fund to set up the Professional Development Incentive Grant Scheme for Language Teachers last year to assist serving language teachers in paying tuition fees.

4,000 fund applications

Under the scheme, each successful applicant may be reimbursed, upon completion of an approved programme for qualification upgrading, 50% of the tuition fee, up to a maximum of $30,000.

The scheme started last April. As at December 21, the committee has received 3,949 applications of which 3,619 have been approved. The grant earmarked amounts to approximately $186 million.

Professor Li said to help teachers with a degree not majoring in the relevant language subject to acquire the subject knowledge in the language they teach, six local tertiary institutions have offered eight approved postgraduate programmes in subject knowledge for English teachers, while seven have offered seven approved postgraduate programmes in subject knowledge for Chinese.

As at November, the programmes for English have received about 1,100 applications and the Chinese about 1,350.

"The scheme has received about 4,000 applications in only a few months and the programmes have commenced with a high enrolment rate, indicating that serving teachers are strongly committed to their professional development," Professor Li said.

Grant scheme review in mid-2005

He expects that the teachers will complete the programmes in the coming year or in the next few years and will enhance their subject knowledge and pedagogy in the language they teach, helping improve the quality of teaching, and more serving teachers will apply for assistance under the scheme to undertake relevant programmes.

"We consider the scheme and the programmes have initially achieved the aim of encouraging more serving teachers to upgrade their qualifications and pursue continuing professional development," Professor Li said.

He said the committee will review the way forward in mid-2005 and decide whether additional scheme resources should be allocated to encourage more eligible serving language teachers to undertake relevant programmes, adding the Education & Manpower Bureau will continue to discuss with local teacher education institutions whether more places should be provided for teacher training.