Around 6 700 outstanding students awarded scholarships by Government (with photos)
30.4.2019

The Secretary for Education, Mr Kevin Yeung, today (April 30) presented certificates to awardees under the HKSAR Government Scholarship Fund (GSF) and the Self-financing Post-secondary Education Fund (SPEF) for the 2018/19 academic year. The total value of scholarships and awards, distributed to around 6 700 students in total, amounted to about $146 million. In addition, the GSF has reserved about $32 million for the Talent Development Scholarship and the Reaching Out Award. Both the GSF and the SPEF give recognition to meritorious post-secondary students with special educational needs (SEN) through the Endeavour Merit Award and the Endeavour Scholarship. This year, a total of around 300 SEN students were given the award/scholarship. In addition, the GSF awards Targeted Scholarships under the Targeted Scholarship Scheme every year to first-year non-local full-time students from Association of Southeast Asian Nations countries, India and Korea, who are enrolled in publicly-funded degree programmes in Hong Kong. In the 2018/19 academic year, eight new Targeted Scholarships have been awarded, comprising five awardees from Korea and one awardee each from India, Singapore and Vietnam. Starting in the 2016/17 academic year, the Belt and Road (B&R) Scholarship was introduced under the Targeted Scholarship Scheme to encourage more students from the B&R regions to pursue undergraduate studies in Hong Kong. Twenty students from Indonesia and Malaysia have been awarded with this scholarship for the first time in this academic year. The GSF was established in 2008 to attract outstanding local students to advance their studies at home, and meritorious non-local students to pursue higher education opportunities in Hong Kong. Scholarships and awards under the GSF are, namely Scholarships for Outstanding Performance, Targeted Scholarship, Talent Development Scholarship, Reaching Out Award and Endeavour Merit Award. Scholarships are offered to students studying for a full-time publicly-funded sub-degree or undergraduate-level or above programmes. A list of 10 participating institutions is in Annex I. Out of some 1 500 student awardees in this academic year, about 1 100 were local students and 400 were non-locals. In terms of level of study, around 900 students were at undergraduate level or above, while the remainder were at sub-degree level. The Self-financing Post-secondary Scholarship Scheme was established under the SPEF in 2011 to promote the quality and sustainable development of the self-financing post-secondary sector. There are five types of scholarships and awards under the scheme, namely Outstanding Performance Scholarship, Best Progress Award, Talent Development Scholarship, Reaching Out Award and Endeavour Scholarship. These scholarships and awards are offered to students pursuing full-time locally accredited self-financing sub-degree or undergraduate programmes. A list of 34 participating institutions is in Annex II. For the 2018/19 academic year, the SPEF offered scholarships and awards to around 5 000 local and around 200 non-local students. In terms of level of study, around 2 600 of them pursued undergraduate studies while the others were sub-degree students. Details of the scholarships and awards under the GSF are available at www.edb.gov.hk/en/edu-system/postsecondary/local-higher-edu/publicly-funded-programmmes/scholarship.html . Those under the SPEF are available at www.cspe.edu.hk/en/Overview-Measures-Fund-SPSS.html .