and with parents' consent, children with more severe or multiple disabilities are placed in special schools for intensive support. Other children with special educational needs (SEN) may attend ordinary schools. There are 60 aided special schools (including a hospital school operating classes at 18 public hospitals) in the 2014/15 school year, providing education services for children with visual impairment, hearing impairment, physical disability, intellectual disability, and emotional and behavioural difficulties. These special schools are subvented by the Government and operated by non-governmental organisations. Some of the schools are serving as resource centres to support ordinary schools in catering for students with SEN.
The EDB provides additional resources and professional support for public sector ordinary schools to help them cater for students with SEN. Schools should pool and deploy the resources flexibly and adopt a Whole School Approach to provide appropriate support for these students. Besides, since the 2007/08 school year, the EDB has been providing structured training courses pitched at the basic, advanced and thematic levels for serving teachers to enhance their capacity in catering for students with SEN.
Language Policy: To facilitate effective learning, the Government has been promoting the use of the mother tongue, Chinese, as the principal medium of instruction (MOI) for local schools. But as both Chinese and English are the official languages in Hong Kong, the Government invests heavily in training students to be biliterate (Chinese and English) and trilingual (Cantonese, Putonghua and English). The fine-tuned MOI arrangements for secondary schools have been implemented from Secondary 1 since the 2010/11 school year and progressed each year to a higher form to cover the entire junior secondary level. The fine-tuning enables schools to enhance students' English proficiency through devising school-based MOI arrangements professionally with regard to their school context, students' needs and teachers' readiness to increase students' opportunities to be exposed to and to use English.
Information Technology (IT) in Education: The Government has invested over $10 billion since the 1998/99 school year in implementing three strategies on IT in Education and other major e-learning initiatives, such as the provision of a recurrent Composite Information Technology Grant for all public sector schools since the 2004/05 school year; a three-year "Pilot Scheme on e-Learning in Schools" in the 2010/11 school year; the "e-Textbook Market Development Scheme" since June 2012; and a "Support Scheme on e-Learning in Schools" since January 2014. In addition, there was funding support of some $1.9 billion from the Quality Education Fund for e-learning projects.
The Government completed a public consultation exercise on the "Fourth Strategy on Information Technology in Education" (ITE4) in mid-2014 with student learning as the focus. Under the ITE4 the Government will implement six actions from the 2015/16 school year covering the areas of upgrading of WiFi infrastructure in all public sector schools, enhancing the supply of quality e-learning resources; curriculum renewal and transformation of pedagogical and assessment practices; building professional leadership and capacity; community involvement; and conduct of on-going research and evaluation studies for coherent and sustainable development of IT in education.
Teacher Preparation: The Hong Kong Institute of Education (HKIEd), under the aegis of the University Grants Committee (UGC), aims to develop the professional knowledge, pedagogy and attributes of teachers. Being the key teacher education provider in Hong Kong, it offers a range of sub-degree, degree and postgraduate programmes for pre-service and in-service teachers. In the 2014/15 academic year, there were about 4 400 full-time and 4 500 part-time students enrolling for the UGC-funded programmes offered by the HKIEd.
The Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU), the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), and the University of Hong Kong (HKU) also offer UGC-funded degree programmes for pre-service teachers and postgraduate programmes for pre-service and in-service teachers. The Open University of Hong Kong (OUHK) which is self-funded, offers degree and postgraduate programmes for pre-service and in-service teachers. To cater to community demand, these teacher education institutions also offer short courses for in-service education practitioners from time to time upon requests from the EDB.
Post-secondary Education: In the 2014/15 academic year, there were 28 institutions offering self-financing locally-accredited sub-degree, undergraduate and top-up degree programmes providing around 46 600 full-time intake places.
The VTC, the City University of Hong Kong (CityU), the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) and HKIEd also offer publicly-funded sub-degree programmes, providing around 11 000 full-time student places in the 2014/15 academic year.
Higher Education: Hong Kong has 19 local degree-awarding higher education institutions, eight of which are funded through the UGC. Seven of the eight are universities and the remaining one is a teacher training institution.
The eight UGC-funded institutions are CityU, HKBU, Lingnan University, CUHK, HKIEd, PolyU, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) and HKU. In the 2014/15 academic year, a total of 87 600 full-time students and 3 900 part-time students enrolled for publicly-funded undergraduate and postgraduate courses. The other 11 degree-awarding tertiary institutions not funded by the UGC include the publicly-funded Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts (HKAPA), the self-financing OUHK, Hong Kong Shue Yan University (HKSYU), Chu Hai College of Higher Education, Hang Seng Management College, Tung Wah College, Caritas Institute of Higher Education, Centennial College, the Technological and Higher Education Institute of Hong Kong (THEi) of the VTC, Hong Kong Nang Yan College of Higher Education and HKCT Institute of Higher Education.
The HKAPA offers academic programmes from Diploma to Master Degree level in Dance, Drama, Film and Television, Music, Theatre & Entertainment Arts and Chinese Opera. In the 2014/15 academic year, the Academy enrols about 860 students for its full-time programmes.
Adult Education: The EDB implements the Financial Assistance Scheme for Designated Evening Adult Education Courses to provide financial assistance to adult learners attending evening secondary courses at designated centres. Adult education courses are also provided by the VTC, the various universities and private institutes.
Education for Newly Arrived Children (NAC): The EDB provides school placement services for NAC, including NAC from the Mainland, and newly arrived non-Chinese speaking children and returnee children. Students may attend the full-time six-month Initiation Programme that helps them integrate into the community and education system before their admission to local mainstream schools. For those newly arrived students who choose to enter
