📋 Tender Overview
Following is a question by Professor the Hon William Wong and a reply by the Secretary for Education Dr Choi Yuklin in the Legislative Council today July 30
Question
It has been reported that the Mainland has set up a national smart education public service platform smart education platform covering primary and secondary education vocational education higher education and lifelong learning to provide personalised online interactive learning materials along with roundtheclock support for students and continuing education participants Some members of the community have suggested that the Government should prioritise the establishment of large language models LLMs and an education platform applicable in Hong Kongs education system and incorporate therein correct history culture and values so as to elevate the quality of education and the depth of cultural inheritance in the territory In this connection will the Government inform this Council
1 whether it has compiled statistics on the total numbers of educational institutions in Hong Kong including universities secondary and primary schools and vocational education institutions which have currently established onpremises LLMs for subjectbased education
2 whether it has plans to develop LLMs of subjectbased education with local characteristics for use by students and people pursuing further studies in Hong Kong if so when the development will begin if not whether it will consider establishing such models and
3 given that the Mainland has already established a smart education platform whether the Government will consider discussing with relevant Mainland authorities the possibility of replicating the platform in Hong Kong and adapting them for use by local educational institutions at various levels following integration with the local curriculum
Reply
President
As global digitalisation continues to progress the Education Bureau EDB in line with the national strategy for invigorating the country through science and education actively promotes education innovation and takes forward digital education in order to nurture future talents to embrace the challenges and opportunities in the era of Artificial Intelligence AI With the formation of the Steering Committee on Strategic Development of Digital Education we have identified the directions and key focus areas for digital education and are continuously optimising the curricula strengthening relevant training for teachers improving digital education infrastructure enhancing learning platforms and AI technology as well as collaborating with stakeholders from various sectors with a view to promoting the implementation of digital education and enhancing the quality of local education
Our consolidated reply to the question raised by Professor the Hon William Wong is as follows
With training in the form of deep learning of massive amounts of text data large language models LLMs are able to generate natural language text and handle various natural language tasks such as text summarisation questioning and answering and translation In the field of education the application of LLMs serves as a learning and teaching aid which assists teachers in preparing lessons setting questions and marking assignments on one hand and help students search for information obtain writing advice etc on the other hand At present the application of LLMs in teaching is being developed and improved continuously To effectively enhance the quality of education and the depth of cultural heritage including incorporating proper values with respect to history and culture through the application of LLMs it is essential for teachers to apply technology in a professional manner and make reference to resources from local national and international online platforms so as to flexibly adopt teaching strategies and design quality learning activities which align with the curriculum and meet the needs of students
In this connection the EDB has been encouraging and supporting schools to explore and adopt diversified and appropriate teaching strategies based on their school contexts and students learning needs and to make good use of technology including LLMs At the same time schools are encouraged to nurture students information literacy as well as proper attitudes and values towards the application of innovation and technology IT which align with the aims and objectives of the school curriculum Currently some schools in Hong Kong are trying to develop schoolbased LLMs for application in learning and teaching While the EDB supports schoolbased innovation we do not require all schools to develop their own LLMs for subjectbased teaching at the present stage As such relevant statistics are not available To keep abreast of the times we will closely take heed of the trends in technological development and application strengthen the professional development of teachers and review the application of LLMs in a timely manner
To promote digital transformation in education we have allocated 500 million under the Quality Education Fund for the implementation of the eLearning Ancillary Facilities Programme to develop elearning ancillary facilities that meet local learning and teaching needs There are a total of 22 funded projects in which IT such as LLMs are deployed The deliverables of the projects are to be released in four batches starting from mid2025 for the use of publiclyfunded schools In fact schools may utilise different resources such as the Composite Information Technology Grant in a flexible manner according to their school contexts for procuring different digital teaching tools and platforms to tie in with subject teaching and cater for the diverse learning needs of students in learning
On resources development the EDB has been committed to providing schools with quality teaching materials including learning and teaching resources on different subjects the Educational MultiMe
