III. Management of student-led activities in universities and moral education
Existing policies and practices for the management of student-led activities
Members noted that although the 11 Universities present at the meeting (“11 universities”) had put in place mechanisms to manage and monitor student-led activities, there had been undesirable behaviours of participants (such as alleged sexual harassment) during student-led orientation camps for many years. Members considered that there were loopholes in the existing mechanisms or deficiencies in the implementation of the guidelines for the management of student-led activities, and the monitoring of student-led activities by the 11 universities was insufficient. A question was raised as to whether any university staff had been held accountable for the poor management of student-led activities so far.
IV. Implementation of senior secondary Citizenship and Social Development
Curriculum
Members pointed out that according to the Inspection Annual Report (2021/22), the CS curriculum was not properly implemented in some schools, including not covering the topics and learning focuses in accordance with the sequence of the themes prescribed in the curriculum, or even having unneeded content irrelevant to the curriculum. A question was raised as to whether the Administration had taken any follow-up actions with the schools concerned. There was a suggestion that schools which performed well in CS should be asked to share their practices with other schools.
The Administration advised that compared with the 2021-2022 school year, learning and teaching activities in the classroom were more diversified in the 2022-2023 school year. Nevertheless, there was still room for improvement in activity design, teacher feedback and lesson conclusion to help consolidate students’ learning. EDB would continue to monitor the situation and provide support.
Mainland study tours
Some members said that they had received complaints from students about the quality of the study tours organized by service providers. These members enquired whether mechanism(s) had been in place to monitor the quality of CS Mainland study tours, especially those organized by service providers; to handle complaints about service providers; to blacklist service providers being complained repeatedly and to inform schools not to commission service providers of poor performance.
The Administration advised that in commissioning service providers to organize CS Mainland study tours, procurement was conducted in accordance with the established mechanism of the Government. EDB would include the learning objectives of the study tours, learning themes and itinerary requirements (such as spots to be visited and learning activities) into the quotation invitation documents in choosing the appropriate service providers to organize study tours. To ensure the quality of the study tours, EDB officers would accompany schools to the Mainland and feedback would be collected from teachers and students after each study tour for improvement. EDB would follow up with the service providers if improvements or adjustments were warranted. EDB would continue to closely monitor the quality of the study tours.
Support strategies
A question was raised as to how EDB would monitor the use of the one-off grant of $300,000 disbursed to secondary schools for procuring learning and teaching resources for CS and organizing relevant learning activities. The Administration advised that most schools were not able to fully utilize the grant to organize related learning activities in the 2021-2022 and 2022-2023 school years due to the COVID-19 epidemic. After careful consideration, EDB had extended the deployment period of the grant for one year to the end of the 2024-2025 school year, so that schools could continue to make use of the unspent balance of the grant in the 2024-2025 school year to support the implementation of CS.