Continuing Education | Third phase of plan launched with added security rule

Vicky Leong (L) and Wong ChiIong

The Education and Youth Affairs Bureau (DSEJ) is launching today the third phase of the government’s Continuing Education Development Plan, to run from 2017 to 2019.

For this phase, most of the mechanics were retained but at least one rule was added in order to guarantee more governmental control and to increase their entitlement to inspection, the DSEJ informed yesterday in a press conference held at its headquarters.

The rule asks the institutions’ lecturing classes and courses included in the plan to submit an electronic record of student attendance within seven days of each session.

Vicky Leong, Chief of the Education Department of the DSEJ, said the measure has been included to “raise the inspection extent.” When questioned Cheong added that such a measure does not replace any of the previously enforced measures but “just adds to it. We will still receive the attendance maps in paper support that need to contain the students’ signature [to prove its authenticity].” She also noted that the DSEJ performs many other tasks to ensure that everything is done according to the law, like surprise visits to the venues of training courses and conducting interviews with students who concluded their courses.

Wong Chi Iong, the chief executive of the division of Continuing Education also remarked that DSEJ have completed during the previous phase “about 500 visits and inspected over 5,000 documents [to make sure that was all according to the rules].”

According to Wong’s figures, a total of 11 serious faulty cases were found and reached the judiciary authorities during the last phase of the plan.

Another of the differences from this phase of the program concerns the speed of the processing of applications for courses from the institutions – which was said to have been adjusted so that institutions are able to receive a quicker reply from DSEJ to be able to quickly start courses.

Wong noted that the institutions will be given a period of 15 days (from April 11 to April 25) to submit their course applications with the result of these applications to be known by April 28.

Remarking on the results of the previous editions of this plan, Wong said that in the second phase (2014 to 2016) a significant growth was registered for the number of participants in the plan, leading to a rise from around 145,000 (phase 1 – 2011 to 2013) to 167,000. Wong noted that such a  number is already “quite high. [It is not expected that it] will grow much further during the third phase,” he said when questioned by the media.

Also the government’s subsidy remains unchanged: MOP6,000 per applicant, representing a total investment of around MOP740 million as in the plan’s second phase.