LCQ8: Implementation of life planning education
Question:
Starting from the 2014/15 school year, the Education Bureau (EDB) has implemented life planning education (LPE) in secondary schools and provided each public sector school (including special school) and Direct Subsidy Scheme secondary school operating classes at senior secondary levels with the Career and Life Planning Grant (CLPG). Starting from the 2016/17 school year, schools may turn CLPG into regular teaching posts. In 2019, EDB further announced that public sector secondary schools must turn CLPG into regular teaching posts by the 2022/23 school year to provide more stable teacher manpower for enhancing the development of LPE and guidance services. However, there are views that the Government’s expenditure on LPE is not commensurate with its effectiveness. In this connection, will the Government inform this Council:
(1) of the number of schools which have turned CLPG into regular teaching posts since the 2022/23 school year, and the annual expenditure involved in creating such regular teaching posts;
(2) of the staffing establishment, specific functions and performance indicators of the EDB’s Life Planning Education Section; and
(3) whether the EDB will consider establishing a regular evaluation mechanism to periodically assess the effectiveness of schools in implementing LPE and propose recommendations for improvement; if so, of the details?
Reply:
President,
The Education Bureau (EDB) has been attaching great importance to the implementation of life planning education (LPE), allocating additional resources and providing support to strengthen schools’ implementation of LPE on multiple fronts since the 2014/15 school year, which includes providing additional resources/manpower, promoting business-school partnership, providing professional support, enhancing professional training, etc. Through a wide range of LPE and career exploration activities, schools help students enhance self-understanding, identify their interests, abilities and orientations at an earlier stage, set goals and make better planning and preparation for further studies and career pursuits by equipping them with relevant information on the multiple pathways and workplace.
Regarding the question asked by Dr the Hon Junius Ho, our reply is as follows:
(1) Since the 2014/15 school year, the EDB has been providing each public sector school and Direct Subsidy Scheme (DSS) school operating classes at senior secondary levels with a recurrent provision, the Career and Life Planning Grant (CLPG), to enhance LPE elements for students. To provide more stable teacher manpower to enhance LPE development and related guidance service, public sector schools are given the option to convert the CLPG into regular teaching posts starting from the 2016/17 school year. From the 2019/20 school year onwards, the regular teaching posts converted from the CLPG have been counted towards the calculation of promotion post entitlement in order to strengthen the middle management manpower for taking forward LPE. Since the 2022/23 school year, all public sector schools have fully converted the CLPG into regular teaching posts for empowering schools and the responsible teaching teams to implement LPE. As the relevant expenditure has been turned into regular teaching posts in public sector schools and subsumed under the EDB’s overall expenditure, the EDB does not have a breakdown of relevant figures.
(2) The LPE Section is under the School Development Division of the School Development and Administration Branch of the EDB, and is tasked to support secondary schools in providing LPE and career guidance services for their students. The Section is headed by a Senior Education Officer (Administration), under whom there are two teams separately led by a Senior Inspector responsible for coordinating work related to the support for schools’ LPE development and teacher training, and an Education Officer (Administration) responsible for coordinating the Business-School Partnership Programme (BSPP) and collaboration with other organisations.
To enhance the support to schools for the delivery of LPE in a more comprehensive and systematic approach, the LPE Section conducts school visits to render professional advice to schools. In addition, to enhance the capacities of the teachers to support students in life planning, the LPE Section organises structured training, thematic seminars and sharing sessions for secondary school teachers every school year, with a view to strengthening professional training for teachers and disseminating the good practices of schools. The one-stop Life Planning Information Website is also launched to provide students, teachers and parents with comprehensive information on life planning and multiple pathways. Through the implementation of the BSPP, the LPE Section, in collaboration with different business corporations, government departments and community organisations, has been providing students with diversified career exploration activities, with a view to equipping them with knowledge and information about different industries so that they can better understand the workplace, develop positive work attitudes and get well prepared for further studies or career pursuits. As for strengthening public education, the LPE Section has rolled out publicity activities since 2016 to promote the culture of supporting young people in life planning. They include broadcasting feature interviews with outstanding persons of different industries on various promotional platforms to get the message of “every trade has its masters” across, producing newspaper supplements to showcase good practices of schools and BSPP partners in implementing life planning and holding activities to help parents understand the importance of life planning. The LPE Section will continue providing support to schools for the implementation of LPE, with a view to helping students identify their interests, abilities and orientations at an earlier stage, set goals and make better planning and preparation for further studies and career pursuits.
(3) Since the 2014/15 school year, the LPE Section of the EDB has conducted four rounds of school visits, visiting all of the nearly 500 public sector and DSS schools operating classes at senior secondary levels in each round, for professional exchanges, examining and discussing the school-based work on LPE, and further studies and career guidance of the schools, as well as rendering professional advice to schools. Based on the observations from the four rounds of school visits, most schools attached great importance to LPE, developed the school-based LPE and adopted various modes in delivering related activities having regard to their own circumstances and students’ needs. They also gradually enhanced cross-team collaboration to provide students with support related to life planning. A wide range of LPE activities were organised by schools, and a number of schools offered school-based life planning lessons to help students identify their career aspirations, develop a positive work attitude, set goals, etc. Besides, according to the information gathered during the school visits, many schools have progressively implemented the cyclic self-evaluation mechanism of “Planning – Implementation – Evaluation”, and would adjust their work plans based on the evaluation findings in a timely manner, facilitating schools’ self-improvement. The LPE Section will continue to conduct school visits to understand schools’ progress in the implementation of LPE, as well as to render professional advice to schools and gather good practices from different schools for dissemination to other schools for reference.
In addition, to ensure that the activities under the BSPP of the EDB achieve the expected outcomes and objectives, officers from the LPE Section regularly attend various types of activities to observe the activity processes, arrangements and students’ responses. Questionnaires and reflections from participating students are collected to understand their views and the benefits they gained. The relevant feedback is then shared with BSPP partners for collaborative review, ensuring that the activities achieve the expected outcomes and align with the goals of promoting LPE. Moreover, the LPE Section regularly invites BSPP partners to attend meetings to evaluate the content and effectiveness of the activities, as well as to share successful experience in organising activities.
Issued at HKT 14:48
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