The Academy for Performing Arts and the Association of Accounting Technicians have been invited to join the Vocational Training Council and Caritas Adult & Higher Education Service to offer nearly 40 career-oriented curriculum courses for senior secondary students.

The courses cover business, arts and media, design, services, performing arts, IT, engineering, food production and management, and leisure, tourism and hospitality.

Course providers will recognise the qualification as equivalent to one pass in the Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination to further studies in the same field in their respective institutions. Recognition of the qualification is being sought from other tertiary institutions.

New academic structure

The Education & Manpower Bureau is working with the Council for Academic Accreditation to establish a quality assurance system for career-oriented curriculum courses. In the long run, the qualification will be subsumed under the qualifications framework.

Deputy Secretary for Education & Manpower Chris Wardlaw said under the proposed structure, students can choose to take two or three electives out of 20 subjects, or out of career oriented courses on top of the four core subjects Chinese, English, mathematics, and liberal studies.

"All subjects should have theoretical and applied learning. The difference is that for elective subjects such as physics or economics, underpinning theoretical knowledge in a broad subject area is the focus, whereas for career oriented studies the starting point is application of knowledge in a particular field," he said.

"More importantly, it can lead students to multiple and flexible progression pathways to further studies, professional qualifications and employment, in addition to the traditional one through public examinations to universities."

Course fees

Course fees for the two-year programmes of the 2005-07 cohort range from $5,000 to $8,000. In the pilot, students are expected to pay a minimum part of the course fee as they will have extra learning experiences outside the normal school curriculum and have the opportunity to obtain additional qualifications.

The bureau will work with schools to achieve effective allocation of resources so that no students will be deprived of the opportunity to study the curriculum through lack of means.

As for the Yi Jin-secondary schools collaboration project, the provision of places will double to 1,000 and participating schools can be as many as 20.

Participating schools will partner a member of the Federation for Continuing Education in Tertiary Institutions to run the programme with core modules on Chinese, English, mathematics, IT application, Putonghua and communication skills, and a wide variety of electives.

On completion of the full programme, students will be awarded a certificate comparable to five passes in the HKCEE. They can pursue further studies like diploma and sub-degree programmes or apply for civil service posts requiring such qualifications.

A briefing session on career-oriented studies will be held for schools at La Salle College on March 24. For enquiries call 2762 1491 or 3540 7433.