The Quality Education Fund (; 2 January 1998 – ) is a fund in

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delta i ...

set up for promoting

education reform Education reform is the name given to the goal of changing public education. The meaning and education methods have changed through debates over what content or experiences result in an educated individual or an educated society. Historically, t ...

. It was suggested by

Tung Chee-hwa Tung Chee-hwa (; born 7 July 1937) is a Hong Kong businessman and politician who served as the first Chief Executive of Hong Kong between 1997 and 2005, upon the transfer of sovereignty on 1 July. He is currently a vice-chairman of the Chin ...

, former

Chief Executive of Hong Kong The Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region is the representative of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and head of the Government of Hong Kong. The position was created to replace the office of governor of ...

, in his first policy address in October 1997. It is used for funding various quality education programmes in Hong Kong. After the fund was set up, it obtained five billion HKD from the Government of Hong Kong to support its long-term operation. Initially, the full amount of requested funding will be allocated to the applicants, but now the fund is a matching fund.

Statistics

In the first eight rounds of allocation, 15,089 applications were received. 5,802 applications were successful, with a total of thirty-one billion HKD allocated. Over 90% of primary, secondary, and special schools had applied.

Criticism

On 15 October 2001, Audit Commission published a report named "Management of the Quality Education Fund". It provided some criticisms and suggestions. Initially, there were no limits on the amount of applications from an applicant. Some schools applied many times to implement many plans so it increased the workload on teachers. Although applying is voluntary, some people saw "successful applications" as an indicator of performance of schools, causing many schools to apply to catch up. During an interview,

Fanny Law Fanny Law Fan Chiu-fun (; ' Fan; born 24 February 1953) is a former non-official member of the Executive Council of Hong Kong. She was awarded the Grand Bauhinia Medal (GBM) by the Hong Kong SAR Government in 2017. Law held the posts of S ...

, former permanent secretary of

Education and Manpower Bureau The Education Bureau (EDB) is responsible for formulating and implementing education policies in Hong Kong. The bureau is headed by the Secretary for Education and oversees agencies including University Grants Committee and Student Fina ...

, said, "Some schools seem to stipulate that every teacher needs to write some suggestion, creating intangible pressure in the process." There were also criticisms that the fund is effectively involuntary. The education industry has also complained that the procedures were complicated and the requirements were too high. On 25 May 2018, The chairperson of the fund, Xu Lian'an, said that the fund did not provide a form for applications and schools had to write their own plan outline, so the fund would simplify procedures by designing an application form for schools to fill in. Successful applications are uploaded to the fund's website (Cyber Resource Centre) for others to reference. He also said that after simplifying procedures, time it takes to process applications involving amounts over 600 thousand HKD can be shortened from over six months to three months only.

Significant items

* Hong Kong Education City * Sign Assisted Instruction Programme

References

External links

*
Cyber Resource Centre
{{Authority control Education in Hong Kong Government of Hong Kong 1998 establishments in Hong Kong