Following is the transcript of remarks by the Secretary for Education, Mr Kevin Yeung, after officiating at the inauguration ceremony of the Academy for Leadership in Teacher Education at the University of Hong Kong today (March 13).
Reporter: (concerning TWGHs Leo Tung-hai Lee Primary School) Can you explain why the Bureau did not follow up on the complaint regarding the same school last year in July? Is such a mechanism giving too much power to the school and will the government try to be more hands-on in the management of schools to avoid abuse of power by the school management?
Secretary for Education: As I explained, school-based management is a mechanism that we think that it's better for some of the school's daily operations and decisions to be managed at the school level through the school board (Incorporated Management Committee) i.e. with participation of different stakeholders including the school sponsoring bodies, parents, teachers and alumni as well. We believe that some of the decisions, especially involving the teaching and learning and the daily operations, that would be better handled by the school level rather than being handled at the government level. That said, all the complaints relating to the Education Ordinance and the Codes of Aid will be handled by the Education Bureau in accordance with the requirements in the law. Also, all complaints from the staff or teachers against the schools, especially for example the board or the principals, if they complain to us, we will handle the case according to our internal procedures. In handling the case, we sometimes have to seek information from the schools otherwise we won’t have all the available information to make a good judgement, so simply asking the school for more information does not imply that we have let the school to handle the complaint totally and in the past we had not shirked our responsibility at all.
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)
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