Education | 10 percent of continuing courses disqualified from subsidies

The Education and Youth Affairs Bureau (DSEJ) reported that a few continuing education courses were deemed ineligible for governmental subsidies after failing to meet the government’s requirements.

Yesterday, during a TDM program, Wong Chi Iong, Chief Executive of the Division of Continuing Education under the DSEJ, noted that, until January, the third phase of the DSEJ’s continuing education development program approved a total of more than 40,000 courses, although 10 percent of these were not approved for subsidies.

According to Wong, the cases without approval are related to the disqualification of course lecturers, unreasonable tuition fees, as well as poor course completion rates.

DSEJ has been criticized for failing to set up criteria for students’ attendance rate at specific institutions. One institution was denied inclusion in the subsidy fund despite their efforts to improve the attendance rate.

Wong said that this specific case was rejected due to the low attendance rate, since only 30 percent of the students finished the minimum of 70 percent of the classes.

DSEJ talked with the institution three times to advise them of the reason behind the rejection.

Wong expressed his understanding that students might be unable to attend the courses due to family or work reasons. He hopes that the courses’ organizers can nurture better performance in those courses to attract more residents to pursue continuous education.