Government committed to promoting IT in education
28 - 10 - 2000

The Government is committed to promoting information technology (IT) in education to equip our young people with the knowledge, the skills and the attitude to meet the challenges of the Information Age.

The remark was made by the Director of Information Technology Services, Mr Lau Kam-hung, at the opening ceremony of the Association for Computing Machinery International Collegiate Programming Contest, Asia Regional Contest, Hong Kong, 2000 today (October 28).

The Government has implemented a number of measures to promote IT in education on top of the advanced telecommunications network and modern information infrastructure that Hong Kong has already possessed.

This is to ensure that our young generation are competent to bring these strengths and advantages together to develop Hong Kong into a leading digital city in the 21st century.

"On basic education, we have launched a five-year strategy on IT in education with a view to turning our schools into dynamic and innovative places of learning where our students can develop their capabilities to process information effectively and efficiently," said Mr Lau.

"Today, all our schools are already connected to the Internet and our teachers are undergoing IT training at different levels.

"We have also developed IT learning targets for students at different stages.

"Furthermore, our Chief Executive, Mr Tung Chee Hwa, in his recent policy address, pledged to provide funds to secondary schools to buy notebook computers for loan to needy students and to provide more multi-media facilities to schools to enhance teaching and learning with the use of IT," he said.

To increase the supply of IT practitioners, the Government is also improving the vocational training in IT by upgrading the IT infrastructure of our technical colleges and institutions.

Courses in information systems and software engineering have been enhanced and strengthened to provide IT personnel with the latest knowledge and skills.

Mr Lau noted that the local universities and tertiary institutions had also endeavoured to ensure that all tertiary students are immersed in an IT environment.

Currently, almost one quarter of the full-time undergraduates in Hong Kong are studying courses related to IT and engineering.

IT literacy benchmarks have been set up in some of the tertiary institutions to ensure that the graduates will be competent in using IT.

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