Discuss the Rationale and the Effect of the Direct Subsidy Scheme in Secondary Education. What Are Its Features and the Pros and Cons of the Scheme? What Is Your Position on the Scheme?

Discuss the rationale and the effect of the Direct Subsidy Scheme in secondary education. What are its features and the pros and cons of the scheme? What is your position on the scheme?

It has been almost 20 years since the Education Department proposed the Direct Subsidy Scheme(DSS) in Hong Kong. In 1988,, the Education Commission Report No. 3 proposed the DSS in a bid to build a strong private sector in the provision of education and offer more choices to the parents. It is good to strengthen the private school sector in the current education system of Hong Kong, but there is also a growing concern in the society about the impact of the scheme brought to the education system. This essay is going to outline the rationale,effects,features,advantage and constrains of the scheme.

Rationale

After the introduction of the 9-year free and compulsory eduction scheme, the Hong Kong government was obliged to provide education for all eligible children. Due to insufficient places in government and aided schools, the government also implemented the Bought Place Scheme under which places were bought from the private sector to satisfy the unmet demands. However, under BPS, the government were not able to provide places due to their limited capacity to take up all eligible students, failed to provide quality education or even unable to lift up those private schools’ standards to attract better students and ultimately had to be gradually phased out by the Government.

Moreover, the BPS was unsatisfactory arrangement for all parties. Due to limited resources, BPS schools were generally inferior to government and aided schools, for example the unbalanced class size, ratio of graduate to non-graduate teachers not in proportion etc. All these factors affect the quality of education that students received.

Features

In order to become the strong and independent private sector in the education system, the DSS has few features. If the school wants to be admitted into the DSS, the school must reach the standard of government and aided schools. The mode of operation should be unisessional. The class size should not exceed 40 pupils for Secondary 1 to 5 and 30 pupils for Secondary 6 and 7, teachers should be qualified teachers registered with the ED, the teacher to class ratio should be, at a minimum, 1.3 teachers per class for Secondary 1 to 5 and 2 teachers per class for Secondary 6 and 7 and the ratio of graduate to non-graduate teachers should be at least 7:3.

The government and aided schools need to follow many guidelines on curriculum set by the Education Department, DSS has the high autonomy. They can set their own curriculum based on the students they admitted. The admission of students under the DSS is not limited by geographical restriction.
Finally, the financing of DDS schools would rely on its own set school fee and government subsidy. DSS schools are free to set their school fee, and the amount was set up to the decision of the schools

Effect
The introduction of DSS raise the overall standard of private schools as it imposes the requirement that schools must have attained the standard of government and aided schools in order to be admitted into the DSS.
Apart from those traditional branded schools attributing to this trend of privatization of education, there are also some less famous schools turning to DSS so that they can better cater the special needs of their original students and have new sources of applicants by restructuring their custom curricula and syllabus.

Advantages
Improvement of private school’s image
Under the DSS scheme, schools are needed to elevate their standard to that of government and aided schools in order to apply for becoming DSS schools. In addition to the policy direction by the government, the applying school could charge school fee on top of the government subsidy. This increase in resources would help to contribute to the improvement of facilities and teaching standard, thus with better quality, the better the image.
2)Greater Autonomy
DSS schools enjoy a large degree of autonomy on admission of students, determination of school fee, design of curriculum and setting of employment package so as to guarantee the quality of their students.
3)Elevation of Teaching Standard
DSS leads to the build up of tailor-made curriculum, more equipped facilities, performance-linked payment scale and through market mechanism, and these all contribute to the advancement of teaching standard.Under the DSS, schools would have more resources which could be spent on more facilities.
4) More choices for parents and students
Now parents and students have another option in addition to Government, aided, private and international schools; they can take the initiative to apply for any DSS schools they desired, comparatively speaking their role in the SSPA is rather passive as considerations taken into account include not only ability of the student but also geographic location of residence.

Disadvantages
1)Infringement against Equity and Equality
DSS fails to meet the 5 aspects of equality suggested by Le Grand, they are equlity of public expenditure, equality of final income, equality of use and also cost and equality outcome.

Accountably of DSS Schools public expenditure is contributed by all tax-payers, thus they are blamed for using public expenditure but not accountable to the general public and only recruiting middle class students
3) Interference with the Stability of the Society
The DSS violates the spirit of ‘education for all walks of life’; students are not treated equally but those which better family background, i.e. wealth, have a better chance of getting into these schools, for instance, middle and upper class children are better trained in entrance interviews or more equipped with extracurricular activities which help to increase success of application.
4) Infringement of social right
According to T.H Marhshall (1963), our rights arise from our citizenship to the society. He says that citizen should have equal civil, political and social rights. Social rights are the citizen’s rights to receive welfare which includes the right to education. Therefore, all citizens of Hong Kong should have equal access to education and further to all schools. The DSS by denying equal access to students infringes students’ social right.
(My stands)
The DSS cannot meet the objective it aims. It cannot attract private school to join the scheme but the prestigious government and aided schools.
Second, as discussed above, the scheme infringes the principle of equality. It also hinders the very objective of education, which is to facilitate social mobility. Third, the relationship between teachers and students may deteriorate. Under the DSS, teaching becomes a commodity and the relationship between teachers and students is very much commercialized. Students may treat themselves as customers and have demands for teachers because they have paid the very expensive school fees. . I believe that in addition to transferring knowledge, teachers and students have a bonding of trust and friendship, but under the DSS injected commercial elements into this relationship, necessarily academic achievements form the prime demand for all parties. Students’ respect for teachers that is a traditional virtue in the Chinese society may gradually disappear.
(Suggestion)
I would then suggest the government to abolish the scheme, and change their attentions to ways that can increase autonomy of schools, such that they can design learning activities and curriculum based on the interests and abilities of the students, which is one of the main objectives of DSS. The Education Bureau may give more freedom to the schools and switching the manpower to monitor and ensure the teaching quality of the schools. Though the total resource in the education side may be less compare with the existence of DSS, it trades off the opportunities of the lower income group. Therefore, the government should continue to bear the cost itself. The total cost can be high, but I just always believe that investing on education is a much wiser and safer option than the stocking market or warrant market.
Conclusion

The DSS is in fact a remedy proposed to alleviate the problems brought by the BPS. It was hoped to uplift the standard of private schools, in order to create a strong and independent private sector. The Government’s intention should be appreciated.

However, when the scheme is put in practice, it fails to tackle the problems it aims to strike.It fails to achieve the ultimate goal of education ---- “education for all walks of life”. The DSS could therefore be seen as an unsatisfactory means to save the private sector of our education system.