The Education & Manpower Bureau has proposed expanding the operating expenses block grant and to introduce a teacher relief grant in schools with incorporated management committees.

At the Legislative Council's Panel on Education meeting today, Secretary for Education & Manpower Arthur Li said the proposal would give greater funding flexibility to provide schools which have established an incorporated management committee more autonomy and flexibility over the use of resources.

He also proposed providing time-limited cash support to help schools to establish such a committee and get familiar with its operation.

Prof Li expected participatory and transparent school governance will lead to enhanced accountability. Coupled with a proper financial and resource-management system with built-in checks and balances, it will help guard against any abuse of authority or impropriety in the use of resources.

He added the bureau can only responsibly devolve more funding flexibility to schools with incorporated management committees.

In a paper to the Education Panel, the bureau said the existing block grant will be expanded by including more non-salary grants, extending the ambit of deployment and relaxing the use of surplus, as well as simplifying the computation and adjustment mechanism.

In the case of a 30-class aided whole-day primary school, the expanded block grant per annum is about $3 million and that of a 30-class aided secondary school, $5 million.

Schools to have greater flexibility

As regards the new teacher relief grant, the bureau said schools with incorporated management committees can recruit supply teachers by merging the centrally-controlled supply teacher grant and the substitute teacher grant.

The teacher relief grant amounts to a maximum of about $1.3 million per annum for a 30-class aided whole-day primary school and about $2.1 million for a 30-class aided secondary school, assuming 10% of the teaching establishment is encashed on a permanent basis.

The Education (Amendment) Ordinance 2004, which came into effect in January, provides legal backing for the participation of all key stakeholders in school management and decision-making.

To facilitate the accounting arrangements, the expansion of the block grant and teacher relief grant offer will take effect from the school year following the establishment of the incorporated management committee.

Since the Education Ordinance requires aided schools to submit their draft incorporated management committee constitutions by July 1, 2009, it is anticipated the proposed funding flexibility will be fully implemented by the 2009/10 school year in all aided schools.

Apart from the central support for the establishment and operation of the incorporated management committees, there are school-specific issues which can only be handled by schools and their school sponsoring bodies.

Initial cash grant $350,000

To help resolve these issues, the bureau will provide to schools a time-limited cash grant to enable them to acquire legal and accounting professional services, engage experienced personnel in manpower resources planning and financial matters, organise school-based training, and meet the necessary costs for setting up and facilitating the smooth operation of the incorporated management committee in the initial years.

The bureau proposed to provide an initial time-limited cash grant of $350,000 per school per annum in the initial years, representing an increase of about 10% in administrative and other non-salary operational expenses of aided schools.

The grant will be disbursed to schools concerned from the 2005/06 school year leading up to the end of the 2008/09 school year.