Education also creates and expands the pool of talents to maintain Hong Kong's economic development and international competitiveness. Our best universities are among the top ten in the region, and our best students are among the best in the world. However, the success of Hong Kong lies in our flexibility to respond to changes and our determination for improvement. We have to inject new life into the whole education sector. To achieve this, we are undergoing major reforms in our education system, our examination system, our education regulators, our schools, our teachers and, above all, our attitude towards education.
Education is a continuum.
The inputs into the tertiary sector are the outputs from the school sector. We hope that several years down the road, the tertiary sector is able to reap the benefits from our reforms in the basic education sector which we are now embarking on. But universities cannot simply wait. They have to ensure that their current outputs, that is, their graduates and their research work, meet the aspirations of the community. Hong Kong has been, and will continue to be, a place that treasures and respects institutional autonomy and academic freedom.