A $520 million voluntary early retirement scheme has been proposed for aided secondary school teachers to ease the problem of redundant teachers and prepare schools to implement the new senior secondary curriculum.

Deputy Secretary for Education & Manpower Cheng Yan-chee said the three-year scheme will be put in place from 2006 for teachers aged below 60 with over 10 years of service.

Speaking at the Legislative Council Panel on Education today, Mr Cheng said it will be similar to the three-year scheme for aided primary school teachers implemented last year. There were 508 successful cases in 2004 and about 980 teachers applied for the scheme in the 2005 exercise.

840 teachers on surplus

The secondary school student enrolment is projected to drop 5%, from 462,000 in 2004-05 to 441,000 in 2009-10. As a result, about 840 secondary school teachers will become surplus to requirement from 2005-06 to 2009-10 school years.

Mr Cheng said the proposed scheme will help ease the problem. To allow for some flexibility where necessary, applications for early retirement in 2005-06 will be considered, if the schools concerned support them and they are justified on operational grounds.

The ex-gratia payment will be a one-off grant worked out on the basis of one month of the teacher's last substantive salary for every two complete years of recognised service in the school sector, subject to a cap of 12 months' salary.

Mr Cheng said the bureau will determine every year the number of teachers who may join the scheme, having regard to the estimated supply and demand of teachers, the manpower requirement and estimated teacher redundancy of individual schools at the time as well as the availability of funding.

The bureau will seek funding approval from the Finance Committee next month, he added.