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 specialists/physicians and with parents' consent, children with severe or multiple disabilities are placed in special schools for more intensive support. Other children with special educational needs (SEN) are placed in ordinary schools. There are 60 aided special schools in the 2011/12 school year, including a hospital school (operating classes at 18 hospitals), providing places for children with visual impairment, hearing impairment, physical disability, emotional and behavioural difficulties and intellectual disability. These special schools are subvented by the Government and operated by non-governmental organisations involved in this work. Some are serving as resource centres to support ordinary schools in catering for students with SEN.

The EDB provides additional resources and professional support for public sector primary and secondary schools to cater for students with SEN. Schools are required to deploy the resources flexibly and adopt a Whole School Approach to provide appropriate school-based support services for these students. To build up teachers' professional capacity in catering for students with SEN, structured training courses are provided under a Teacher Professional Development Framework on Integrated Education put in place starting from the 2007/08 school year.

Language Policy: To facilitate effective learning, the Government has been promoting the use of the mother tongue, Chinese, as the principal medium of instruction for local schools. But both Chinese and English as the official languages in Hong Kong, the Government also invests heavily in training students to be biliterate (Chinese and English) and trilingual (Cantonese, Putonghua and English). Starting from the 2010/11 school year, the fine-tuned medium of instruction arrangements for secondary schools have been implemented at Secondary 1 level and will progress each year to a higher form at junior secondary levels to provide students with more opportunities to use English and enhance their English proficiency.

Information Technology (IT) in Education: The Government launched the first, second and third IT Education Strategies in 1998, 2004 and 2008 respectively. The first and second IT in Education Strategies focused on the enhancement of IT infrastructure and on empowering learning and teaching with IT. The third strategy entitled "Right Technology at the Right Time for the Right Task", aims at reducing the burden on teachers integrating IT into their core activities, from lesson planning to assessment of students, continuing to sharpen teachers' IT pedagogical skills, enhancing students' information literacy, generating a favourable IT environment at the school level, and equipping parents with the skills to guide their children to use the Internet safely to learn at home.

The Government has further committed itself to formulating new initiatives on the promotion of e-Learning in schools, including the development of e-Learning resources for the enhancement of learning and teaching. The implementation measures include strengthening and expediting the development of the Depository of Curriculum-based Learning and Teaching Resources in different subjects at both primary and junior secondary levels in the 2009/10 to 2012/13 school year, provision of one-off grant to schools for purchasing e-Learning resources in the 2010/11 school year, launch of the three year Pilot Scheme on e-Learning in schools starting from 2011 and the promotion of awareness of health and copyright issues related to the use of digital resources and devices.

Teacher Preparation: The Hong Kong Institute of Education (HKIEd), under the aegis of the University Grants Committee (UGC), aims to upgrade the quality of teacher education. It offers a range of sub-degree, degree and postgraduate programmes for pre-service and in-service teachers. In the 2011/12 academic year, there were about 3 600 full-time and 3 600 part-time students enrolling for UGC-funded programmes offered by HKIEd.

The Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU), the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), and the University of Hong Kong (HKU) also offer degree and postgraduate programmes for pre-service and in-service teachers. The Open University of Hong Kong (OUHK) offers degree programmes for pre-service teachers and Postgraduate Diploma in Education programmes for pre-service and in-service school teachers.

To cater to community demand, these institutes also offer short courses for in-service education practitioners from time to time upon requests from the EDB.

Post-secondary Education: In the 2011/12 academic year, there were 26 institutions offering self-financing locally accredited sub-degree, degree and top-up degree programmes providing around 32 600 student places.

The VTC, the City University of Hong Kong (CityU), the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU), Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts (HKAPA) and HKIEd also offer publicly-funded sub-degree programmes, providing some 7 400 student places in the 2011/12 academic year.

Higher Education: Hong Kong has 16 degree-awarding higher education institutions, eight of which are funded through the UGC. Seven of the eight are universities and the remaining one is a teacher training institution. The other eight degree-awarding tertiary institutions are not funded by the UGC. They are the publicly-funded HKAPA, the self-financing OUHK, Hong Kong Shue Yan University (HKSYU), Chu Hai College of Higher Education, Hang Seng Management College, Tung Wah College, Caritas Institute of Higher Education and Centennial College.

The eight UGC-funded institutions are CityU, HKBU, Lingnan University, CUHK, HKIEd, PolyU, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) and HKU. In the 2011/12 academic year, a total of 64 400 full-time students and 4 300 part-time students enrolled for publicly-funded undergraduate and postgraduate courses.

The OUHK offers degree, non-degree and postgraduate programmes principally through open access and distance education to working adults aged 17 and above. In the 2011/12 academic year, over 18 000 students – including about 6 600 students have enrolled in its face-to-face programmes.

The HKAPA offers academic programmes from Diploma to Master Degree level in Dance, Drama, Film and Television, Music, Theatre and Entertainment Arts as well as Chinese Traditional Theatre. Every year, the Academy enrols about 750 students for its full time programmes and around 800 students for the junior programmes.

Adult Education: The EDB implements the Financial Assistance Scheme for Designated Evening Adult Education Courses to provide financial assistance to adult learners attending evening secondary courses at designated centres. Adult education courses are also provided by the VTC, the various universities and private institutes.

Education for Newly Arrived Children (NAC): The EDB provides a school placement service for newly-arrived children, including those children from the Mainland, returnee children, and newly-arrived non-Chinese speaking children. Students may attend a six-month full-time Initiation Programme that helps them integrate into the community and education system before their admission to local schools. For those newly-arrived