Education | DSEJ launches new round of long-term planning

The Education and Youth Affairs Bureau (DSEJ) said it has launched a new round of its middle and long-term planning, hoping to absorb opinions from all sectors of society on how to guide the work of local education and youth affairs.

The planning rounds come as the “Ten Year Plan for the Development of Non-Tertiary Education (2011-2020)” and the “Macao Youth Policy (2012-2020)” are scheduled to end next year

The DSEJ said that it will continue to cooperate with schools and parents in order to curate a “safe and excellent learning environment” for students and “cultivate students’ love feelings for the country […] so that students can become talents to serve the people and construct the country.”

Moreover, in order to tie in with the need for curriculum reform, the DSEJ said it will continue to promote the development of teaching materials, including the new teaching materials for “the trial version of secondary history.”

It will also provide schools with the teaching resources related to the “National Flag, National Emblem, National Anthem, Regional Flag and Regional Emblem” to infuse a love of the country among the youth of Macau. To this end, the bureau intends to encourage local schools to establish sister-school relationships with their counterparts in the Greater Bay Area.

According to government statistics released this week, there are 77 schools and 121 school units in Macau in the academic year 2019/2020, which is just beginning. Of this number, 106 school units have joined the free education school system, with about 74,000 students benefitting from it.

The estimated number of students across the different education levels in the academic year 2019/2020 rose 2.6% year-on-year to 82,683, according to the DSEJ. The bureau added that the number of students has increased for six consecutive academic years. DB