Thank you, Deputy President. Many papers published by the Education Bureau (“EDB”) in recent years, such as the Primary Education Curriculum Guide (Pilot Version) (2022) and the Secondary Education Curriculum Guide (2017), contain elements for enhancing students’ sense of belonging to the country and understanding of Chinese history, Chinese culture and national affairs. This approach is worthy of affirmation.

Our country has developed rapidly in some 40 years since the reform and opening up. We have to equip students to harness the opportunities brought about by its development. EDB and schools are duty-bounded to strengthen students’ learning of Chinese history and Chinese culture, and enhance their knowledge on Chinese history, geography and culture. Secondary school students can then understand and explore the development and various facets of Chinese history and examine the interrelationships between culture, geography and history. This is not only an unshirkable responsibility and a right thing to do, but also an urgent task for the education sector.

Having said that, the idea of making Chinese History a compulsory subject is quite complicated. Many people are of the view that the idea is premature and may not be favourable to students who wish to pursue further studies in Chinese history at the tertiary level.

At present, Chinese History as an elective at the senior secondary level is a specialized course that covers ancient and modern Chinese history, as well as some topics such as culture and thinking, history and geography, society, and religion. The curriculum is naturally more in-depth than that at the junior secondary level with a view to preparing students for specialized history courses at the tertiary level and becoming Chinese history scholars or teachers in the future.

If the new proposed subject is to be implemented, the content of Chinese history will have to be reduced in order to adapt to all senior secondary school students. This will hinder students from understanding Chinese history in a comprehensive manner and fail to enhance their skills in studying history, which may be counterproductive to enhancing the nurturing of our future history talents.

Deputy President, if a new compulsory subject is added at the senior secondary level, adjustments must be made to the system and other problems such as deployment of resources must be addressed. For example, will entry requirements of universities be revised? Will schools be able to release sufficient hours of lesson time? Will teacher training institutions be able to train enough qualified teachers? Is it necessary to contact publishers for publishing textbooks? These questions all have to be addressed through further communication with society, especially the education sector.

It also takes time to verify the effectiveness of the current proposal of optimizing the senior secondary curriculum. So, it seems too hasty to make the decision on a new compulsory subject at this juncture. Hence, I think this is not the right time to make such a decision.

Deputy President, I so submit.