Chief Executive Ho Iat Seng said yesterday that the government has invested a huge amount of money in education, and it was difficult to increase public spending on the sector in order to maintain a sufficient number of classes and teachers in Macau, because of which schools should reassess the required qualifications of their teachers to attract more students.
Ho made the remarks during yesterday’s Q&A session in the legislature’s hemicycle.
According to Ho, the government currently spends 600,000 to 700,000 patacas on each student’s 15 years of free education, based on each class having 33 students. However, Ho said, if the schools further reduced the number of students in each class by just 10 to 20, the government’s subsidy for each student would be increased to more than one million patacas per student, which was not sustainable in terms of Macau’s public finances.
As the birth rate in Macau is decreasing, Ho said that the non-tertiary education sector (comprising kindergartens and primary and secondary schools) was already facing the problem of under-enrolment, and he expected that the problem would be even more evident in kindergartens and primary schools in the next two to three years, and many schools may then have only fewer than 20 students in each class, “but the government has already tried its best to help the schools,” Ho added.
In addition, Ho noted that there are more than 3,000 students with special education needs (SEN) in Macau, which was a relatively high ratio. Ho said “it is worth pondering whether there are actually so many of them [students with special education needs]”.
Ho also said that some students with special education needs were “completely fine” when entering the secondary school stage, and he hoped that they would not be treated differently in terms of education, adding that the government always analyses in detail the number of students with special education needs.
Ho also said the government would follow up on the support of students with special education needs on all fronts, including education, careers, families and enterprises, and would also provide financial and technical support, as well as the training of teaching staff, hoping that civil society can work together to take good care of the students concerned.
Most of Macau’s schools are privately owned but subsidised by the government.
Legislators attend yesterday’s plenary session addressed by Chief Executive Ho Iat Seng. – Photo: GCS
