Secretary for Education & Manpower Professor Arthur Li says the Government is formulating the third Information Technology in Education Strategy with a view to consulting the public in the second half of 2007.

Professor Li today told lawmakers that one of the proposed focuses of the strategy is supporting schools to sustain the use of IT in enhancing student learning.

"We will encourage schools to chart their own IT education development plans and conduct data-driven evidence-based self-evaluation to assess their effectiveness," he said.

In the past two school years the Government disbursed one-off special grants of $154.51 million in total to 920 public sector schools to implement the second Information Technology in Education Strategy. These are used by schools for non-recurrent expenditure items, such as the purchase of IT hardware.

During the period, the Government also disbursed recurrent grants of $507.6 million in total to 1,019 public sector schools to meet recurrent expenses on IT education, such as maintenance and repair of IT hardware and daily expenses on other IT-related services and consumables.