Wrong sums at schools
Teddy Ng
The Education and Manpower Bureau has been criticised by the Director of Audit for
making wrong projections of secondary student numbers, resulting in vacant school
places and a waste of resources.
The director urged the bureau to re-examine its projections on the supply and demand
of secondary school places and to merge classes where necessary.
The report released yesterday said there were 461,000 secondary students in 402
public and 94 private schools as of September 2002
The average cost of providing a public secondary school place is about HK$36,000 a
year.The audit found that of the 402 public secondary schools, 50 had a total of 145
vacant classrooms.
It also found that there were about 20,300 vacant school places as of September 2002.
As funds are allocated on the number of operating classes, under-enrolment implied
that the resources allocated were not being fully utilised, the report said.
It also revealed that two of the 36 government schools had low utilisation rates,
standing at only 30 per cent and 46 per cent.
The cost of providing a government school place is HK$10,013 higher than that in a
public school because staff are employed on civil service terms and enjoy fringe
benefits.
Despite the vacant places, the government still bought a total of 7,300 places from
non-profit-making private schools at a cost of HK$246 million for the 2002-2003
school year.
Three of these nine schools were awarded negative value-added scores by the bureau
over the past three years.
The audit report said the bureau still planned to build 34 new secondary schools by
2008, claiming the supply of public secondary school places would be insufficient to
meet the demand, based on 2002 projections.
However, the Director of Audit found that 10 of the 34 planned new schools were
completed after the bureau had made its projections in 2002 which did not include the
additional places these 10 new schools would provide.
The report said that supply would exceed demand from 2010.
The director urged the bureau to re-examine its projections and keep enrolments at all
schools under constant review.
It also said that the bureau should ask those schools which had not made significant
progress in catering to the needs of their students to do so within a reasonable time.
The report said that 147 operating classes could be reduced by merging those classes
that had many vacancies.
Secretary for Education and Manpower Arthur Li welcomed the report.
He said the government would consider merging, relocating or closing schools with
substandard facilities and high operating costs.
But he said the government should also consider factors such as the overall provision
of school places at the district level, class structure and parental choice.
For example, while the number of school children in Wan Chai was small, schools
there were popular and attracted students from outside the district. ``We need to give
parents more choice. This is difficult to achieve if we aim to fill all places in a
school,'' he said.
Permanent Secretary for Education and Manpower Fanny Law said the government
would consult educators on the acceptable minimum number of students per class.
She said vacant places were caused by various factors, including the mobility of
people, and that vacant places in a district did not mean necessarily the government
should stop building new schools there.
Education Convergence vice-chairman Ho Hon-kuen urged the government to reduce
class sizes in schools where academic standards were low.
This would allow teachers to concentrate on individual students.
The Director of Audit also found that some tertiary institutions had adopted low
overhead recovery rates for their self-financing activities, which included
non-government funded academic programmes, research and consultancy work. This
sparked concern that tertiary institutions were using government funds for activities
that should be self-financing.
In reply, the University Grants Committee said it accepted a recommendation to
review whether the standard overhead recovery rate of 15 per cent was still
appropriate.
Polytechnic University's Hong Kong Community College acting director Simon
Leung said the institution did not use government funds to support self-financed
courses.
University executive development director Anthony Tam said it was difficult to split
accounts of self-financed and government-funded activities.
Hong Kong University said it supported the audit's recommendations and that the
university was keen to ensure overheads were recovered for all self-financing
activities.
28 November 2003 / 02:54 AM
Causes
This news shows that the market quantity is higher than the equilibrium
quantity. The quantity demanded is lower than quantity supplied (i.e.
20,300 vacant school places). There is an excess supply of school places.
As we know that the birth rate in these recent years became lower and
lower, which means that there is a decrease in demand for school places.
However, the government continues to build new schools. That is the supply
of schools increases. Besides, the quality of some schools have negative
value-added. This results in less people willing to study in those schools, as
all parents hope their children can go to the schools with positive
value-added. So, their highest-valued option foregone is the middle school
instead of the negative value-added school. All these factors caused the
problem of excess supply of school places.
This graph shows that the
excess supply became larger
because the government
continues to build new
schools although there is
excess supply of school
places already.
Solutions
To cope with this situation, the government should stop building new
schools because this will make the excess supply higher.
Stop buying school places from private schools and negative value-added
schools. Also, the school that practiced half-time system is suggested to
change to full-time system, so that more school places can be used.
Other than this, we can use the vacant schools for other alternative uses.
This can reduce the excess supply of the vacant schools. For instance, it
can rent out for commercial use.
This graph shows that the
excess supply of school places
became smaller if the
government has carried out the
policies that were said in the
solutions.
Remarks
Although the government provides `Free Education for 9 Years’, this does
not mean that it is a free good. It is because it is insufficient to satisfy all
students’ wants. More years of free education is preferred to less and
free of charge but it is not a free good. Also, the government has to pay
for this system, so the production cost is more than zero. It is said to be
an economic good.