2000 Policy Address Early Childhood Education - Quality First 57.
Early childhood is the formative stage for psychological and intellectual development.
It provides the foundation for developing the capabilities and interest in life-long learning. We must ensure that no child is deprived of the chance to enjoy early childhood education for financial reasons, so we intend to relax the requirements of the Kindergarten Fee Remission Scheme from this school year onwards to benefit more families. At the same time, we will ask schools to strengthen their quality assurance and to be more transparent in their operations so that the quality of teaching will be enhanced. To upgrade the quality of teachers, we have decided to raise the entry requirements of all newly appointed kindergarten teachers. They will need five passes in the Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination, including Chinese and English, starting from the 2001-2002 school year.