The “Sister School Project” has been launched since 2004. According to the Education Bureau, the purpose is to promote the development and cultural exchanges between schools in the two places, improve the professional level of teachers, broaden the horizons of students, and enhance national identity. The Secretary of the Education Bureau, Cai Ruolian, responded to questions from members of the Legislative Council in writing today (19th), saying that as of March this year, 848 public, direct-funded and special schools in Hong Kong have formed 2,349 pairs of sister schools with mainland schools.
Among the 2349 pairs of sister schools, 296, 229 and 323 local schools respectively have one, two and three or more sister schools in the Mainland.
In order to enable schools to plan sister school activities in the long run, the Education Bureau has provided recurrent subsidies to local public and direct subsidy scheme schools that have established sister schools with mainland schools since the 2018/19 school year. The subsidy for the 2022/23 school year is about 16 per school ten thousand yuan. There are 820 schools applying for the relevant subsidy to hold activities.
The Education Bureau stated that in the past, the epidemic and immigration restrictions affected the exchanges between schools in the two places, but the sister schools carried out “cloud exchanges” to exchange school management experience, classroom teaching experience and joint lesson preparation online. With the receding of the epidemic and the normal customs clearance between the two places, the sister schools resumed on-site mutual visits, and continued the dual-track development of the online communication mode to further strengthen the interconnection and deepen the results.
The Education Bureau stated that it will work closely with mainland departments to coordinate and organize more exchange activities, such as the “Chinese Classics and American Literature Recitation Competition for Guangdong-Hong Kong Sister Schools” and “Summer Learning Camp for Sister Schools in the Greater Bay Area”.
