Hong Kong will continue its efforts to tout the “Study in Hong Kong” brand while breaking into the digital-education frontier to raise artificial-intelligence literacy among students and teachers, the city’s education chief and her deputy said on Thursday.
Speaking at a media luncheon, Secretary for Education Christine Choi Yuk-lin and Undersecretary for Education Jeff Sze Chun-fai described them as key moves for achieving the country’s talent and education goals.
Choi and Sze set their sights on two eagerly awaited events: the annual Asia-Pacific Association for International Education (APAIE) Conference and Exhibition, set to run on Feb 23-27 at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, and also the release of the “Blueprint for Digital Education in Primary and Secondary Schools”, due later this year.
Before the luncheon, Choi helped students from the Chinese Culinary Institute prepare poon choi, a quintessential Chinese New Year feast known for its lavish, rich assortment of ingredients. Afterwards, she drew a parallel between the dish’s abundance and the city’s “diverse” and “high caliber” education offerings.
“For Hong Kong to become an international education hub, the ingredients in the bowl must be of high quality and richly varied,” she said.
Choi said Hong Kong’s universities are consciously diversifying their international student body, and the city continues to be a “first choice” for Western students drawn to Eastern culture. Meanwhile, the government-backed Belt and Road Scholarship has seen warm receptions from applicants and awardees, she said.
Choi said that graduate employment performance also feeds into major global university rankings, calling on institutions to expand Cantonese and Mandarin training for international students who require it, thereby enhancing their job prospects.
The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government is pressing ahead with various internship programs, aiming to provide half of Hong Kong’s university students — international enrollees included — with clerkship opportunities in mainland cities, Choi added.
Choi said she hopes to leverage the upcoming APAIE conference for universities in Hong Kong to “team up in reaching out”, especially to forge closer links with students hailing from other economies engaged in the Belt and Road Initiative.
At the reception, Sze gave a preview of “SciAi” — a teaching assistant chatbot developed by the bureau’s science education team — ahead of the tool’s official rollout in primary and secondary schools on Friday.
He called digital education a “new racetrack” for Hong Kong to get in line with the national strategy for invigorating the country through science and education.
Sze said 95 percent of primary and secondary schools across the city have now submitted applications for the HK$2 billion ($255.9 million) government fund earmarked to bankroll their digital education bids.
