Centralized online system for kindergarten next year

Officials of the Education and Youth Affairs Bureau introduce the new academic year plan during a press conference

Local kindergartens will no longer experience long queues of parents waiting outside to obtain and submit application forms next year, as the Education and Youth Affairs Bureau (DSEJ) has announced its decision to launch a centralized, online registration system in January.
The bureau made the announcement yesterday when informing the public of the current enrolment situation and education reform arrangements for the new academic year. Officials explained that the centralized system is aimed to discourage parents from applying to too many schools and thereby to alleviate pressures felt by children when attending too many screening interviews. It is also expected to streamline the admission procedures for schools, as well as their respective workloads.
The acting head of DSEJ’s Department of Education, Kong Chi Meng, said that the new measure will initially set the limit of each child’s applications to six schools maximum, as the results from the previous year shows that the number of bids placed by parents range from three to eight schools, with five being the average. He added that all registrations will be lodged online, and parents who do not use the Internet can seek help from staff at the bureau’s headquarters.
While the numbers of pupils and kindergarten students continued to climb, local secondary schools have received considerably fewer students over recent years.
Statistics for the new semester show that a total of 16,908 students are enrolled in kindergartens, denoting a 15.5 percent surge. Around 26,645 students are enrolled in primary schools, up by 9.3 percent, whereas 30,686 students are at junior high schools, down by 5.3 percent year-on-year.
According to the DSEJ, a total of 74,871 students will be given a non-tertiary education this coming semester, 3.9 percent more than the enrolment a year earlier. The bureau has also recorded 345 school-aged children that are not attending school; it has promised a follow-up consultation and counselling for all those cases.
Meanwhile, the size of teaching staff grew by 3.7 percent from last year, to 7,129 teachers at the beginning of the semester. Among these, preschool education saw a 14.5 percent increase in teachers, as did the special education sector which witnessed a growth of 22.2 percent. As a result, each regular class has an average of 28.3 students, where the teacher-student ratio is 1:10.7 and the class-teacher ratio is 1:2.6. However, teacher-student ratio for special education dropped sharply by 17.46 percent.
Educational funding for the 2015/2016 academic year has also increased. It amounted to a budget of MOP1.971 billion allocated to the free education allowances and MOP223 million for tuition subsidies; the sums respectively rose by 12 and 7.2 percent year-on-­year.
In addition, the bureau announced that next year, Macau would join the Progress In International Reading Literary Study (PIRLS), an initiative organized by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA). Expected to be one of the key indicators guiding the city’s educational reform, the assessment will test a sample of 4,000 pupils at fourth grade for their reading ability.
Emphasizing holistic development in non-tertiary education, the DSEJ also announced that they are extending the implementation of its Arts education scheme from secondary school students to the sixth graders, providing them with guided tours to theater performances and art galleries.

More special education teachers needed

In the new academic year, 38 out of the total 77 schools in Macau will implement inclusive education schemes. As for special education, a total of 165 teachers will take on 632 students. Although the number of available teaching staff has increased, each class – remaining a similar size of eight students – will be guided by fewer teachers on average.