Calls for the government to implement 15-year free education in Hong Kong are growing louder. And people from the early childhood education sector say they're confident that Chief Executive (CE) Leung Chun-ying will make good on his election pledge to formulate "a concrete and long term blueprint" for early childhood education.

Rosa Chow Wai-chun, chairman of the Hong Kong Early Childhood Educators Association, is calling on the CE to set out in next week's policy address an outline for full-day early education and lower child-teacher ratios. She's also calling for the restoration of the former salary scale that was scrapped after the Pre-primary Education Voucher Scheme was implemented. Re-introduction of the pay scale, she contends, will allow preschool teachers to proceed along their career paths after upgrading their qualifications.

"The percentage of teachers attaining education certificate qualifications has doubled from 40 percent since 2007, but their salaries were not increased accordingly," Chow said. She added that full-time kindergartens are losing 27-43 percent of their teachers every year because of a lack of career potential.

The scheme in effect now allows parents of children aged between three and six to apply for a voucher worth HK$16,800 a year. It can be used to put their kids through any of the 750 participating non-profit preschools.

Families on low incomes can apply for full fee remission, in which the government provides extra cash on top of the voucher, with a cap of HK$20,300 for half-day schools per student per year and HK$32,800 for full-day schools.

The voucher subsidy, put in place in 2007, is barely enough to cover tuition fees at half-day schools, Chow claimed. Whole-day schools, she contends, are struggling to stay afloat because funding is allocated per child rather than per business hour.

Chow said 60 percent of kindergartens provide whole-day service. Among them, half are open 10-12 hours a day and another half for seven hours.

"Hong Kong should have more whole-day kindergartens as more and more parents need to work long hours. Children can be better adapted to whole-day primary education after graduating from preschools as well," she added.

Doris Cheng Pui-wah, director of the Centre for Childhood Research and Innovation at the Hong Kong Institute of Education, hopes the government will provide free preschool education to all kids, saying "no one should lose at the starting line".

The current market-oriented approach to operating kindergartens forces them to focus largely on "extracurricular interest" instead of improving the quality of education, Cheng commented.

"To my knowledge, the government doesn't concern itself much about the extra spending on the full subsidy but with the operational details of managing both profit-making and non-profit-making kindergartens," she said, adding that profit-making kindergartens do not oppose the full subsidy proposal.

Unlike compulsory primary and secondary education, parents should be given the right to decide whether to let their kids to attend kindergartens and whether to accept the free education, she said.

mingyeung@chinadailyhk.com

(HK Edition 01/12/2013 page1)