Special education in Hong Kong: Is history repeating itself

Special education in Hong Kong: Is history repeating itself

• Yung, Ka Kui

Hong Kong Special Education Forum, 1(1), 1-19, 1997

Special Education Society of Hong Kong Ltd.

1997

• E Special Education

• Hong Kong

• 1841-1899
• 1900-1941
• 1941-1945
• 1945-1949
• 1950s
• 1960s
• 1970s
• 1980s
• 1990-1997.6

• Unknown or Unspecified

• View Full Text 全文連結

The first institution ever set up in Hong Kong to look after children with special needs was a home for the blind in 1863. It was not until 1935 when the first school for deaf children was formally opened. Both establishments were initiated by the missionary organisations operating in Hong Kong. The Key milestone to earmark the beginning of special education services in Hong Kong was the start up of a Special Schools Section within the Government in 1960. The Section was later responsible for the rapid development of special education services in special and mainstream schools. The speedy growth of special education services was a result of other major changes taking place within the local education system. One of these changes was the enactment of 9 years of compulsory education in 1978. This pattern of development of special education services in Hong Kong beginning with services for the sensory impaired children through to other services in mainstream schools after compulsory education is introduced matches well with the framework suggested by Putnam(1979). One can witness these developments by looking further at the categorical changes in classifying children with learning difficulties and the increasing number of students identified to be with special educational needs in Hong Kong over the years since 1960. While the idealism for integrating students with special needs into mainstream schools has been stressed by various policy documents in Hong Kong, yet more categories of schools are created to cater for the specific needs of these students. Amongst these creations is the establishment of Practical Schools with strong practically oriented curriculum to support ummotivated students. This was a recommendation made by the Education commission in their Report No.4 (Education Commission, 1990) to deal with curriculum and behaviour problems in Hong Kong. In 1960, the same year when the Special Schools Section was established, a new type of school called 'Practical Secondary Schools' (Education Department, 1960) with strong vocational orientation was opened. The Chinese name of these two kinds of schools are identical. This paper will look at whether history is repeating itself in Hong Kong after more than 30 years of development of special education service.
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Journal Articles

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https://bibliography.lib.eduhk.hk/en/bibs/b1832b9a

2019-01-03