An official education survey result released Tuesday indicated that the number of students attending higher education in Macao during the 2006/2007 academic year grew by 9.6 percent over the previous period to 17,462.

Among the students who attended higher education in the 2006/2007 academic year, 70.5 percent were local students, but the survey, launched by Macao's Statistics and Census Service (DSEC), also found out that the total number of students in non-tertiary education decreased by 4.7 percent to 87,115, with students in secondary education decreasing by 2.2 percent to 44,988, marking the second consecutive year of decline.

There were 134 schools or institutions providing regular education in Macao during the surveyed academic year, comprising 12 institutions of higher education and 122 schools that offered pre-primary, primary and/or secondary (including vocational- technical secondary) education, according to the DSEC.

Meanwhile, the survey results also showed that the number of teachers engaging in regular education in the academic year 2006/2007 increased by 5.3 percent over the previous period to 6,393, as a result of which local teacher/student ratio for regular education was recorded as 1 to 16.4.

To further boost the city's universal education level, the Macao special administrative region (SAR) government has recently announced some new measures to ensure the quality of its school education and the opportunities for all local children to be educated.

Under the new measures, Chinese, Portuguese and English will be recognized by the SAR government as official educational language in local schools, and Macao's private and public schools were recommended to adopt at least one as their formal educational language, while public schools were also required to offer courses to students to learn one more of the official languages.

In addition, the SAR government will also increase the subsidies of tuitions and textbook costs which were granted to help children from local socially disadvantaged households.

(Xinhua News Agency April 23, 2008)