To foster students’ interest in sports and promote a sporting culture in schools, in addition to the existing physical education curriculum, various government bureaux/departments and organisations are committed to promoting sports activities in schools and the community. These activities are conducted as extracurricular activities to encourage regular participation of students and increase the number of activities for enhancement of physical fitness and building an active and healthy lifestyle.
(a) School Sports Programme
(b) School Sports Promotion Coordinators
(c) Student Athlete Support Scheme
(d) Opening up School Facilities for Promotion of Sports Development Scheme
(e) Schools Sports Competitions
The Leisure and Cultural Services Department (LCSD) has implemented the School Sports Programme (SSP) since 2001. The SSP is organised by various “national sports associations” (NSAs), subvented by the LCSD and co-organised by the Education Bureau, the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the Hong Kong Baptist University. The activities of the SSP are organised in line with schools’ daily schedules to enable students of primary, secondary and special schools to participate in a wide variety of sports activities during their leisure time in schools. The SSP aims to provide students with more opportunities to participate in sports, encourage students to participate in sports on a regular basis, raise the sport performance standard among students and identify potential student athletes for further training.
(b) School Sports Promotion Coordinators
Since 2018, we have been supporting schools in employing retired athletes as School Sports Promotion Coordinators under the Retired Athletes Transformation Programme with the support of the LCSD, the Education Bureau and the Hong Kong Sports Institute to help schools promote sports in schools; as well as helping retired athletes receive on-the-job training to develop their second career.
(c) Student Athlete Support Scheme
In the 2013/14 school year, we collaborated with the Schools Sports Federation of Hong Kong, China (HKSSF) and introduced the Pilot Scheme for Student Athlete Support with the objective of helping students with financial needs to develop their potential in sports and pursue their sporting goals. The Scheme was enhanced, regularised and renamed as the Student Athlete Support Scheme in the 2016/17 school year. The Scheme subsidises students with financial needs in the purchase of personal sports equipment, transportation costs of attending local training and participating in HKSSF competitions, school squad coaching fees as well as course fees for participating in the SSP under the LCSD.
(d) Opening up School Facilities for Promotion of Sports Development Scheme
We collaborated with the Education Bureau to launch the Opening up School Facilities for Promotion of Sports Development Scheme since the 2017/18 school year to encourage schools to open up their facilities to sports organisations for organising sports programmes through a provision of additional subsidy. The objectives are to increase the provision of sports facilities and to enchance the sporting culture in schools. Over the years, we introduced various enhancement measures to encourage more participation from schools and sports organisations.
For details, please refer to Education Bureau Circular No. 4/2025 – Opening up School Facilities for Promotion of Sports Development Scheme.
https://applications.edb.gov.hk/circular/upload/EDBC/EDBC25004E.pdf
(e) Schools Sports Competitions
The HKSSF is one of the main stakeholders in promoting sporting activities for youth, and is also one of the sports organisations subsidised by the LCSD. Over 95% of the schools in Hong Kong are registered members of the HKSSF. The HKSSF’s work includes organising inter-primary school and inter-secondary school sports competitions, Jing Ying, Inter-port as well as international school sports competitions, covering over 20 sports and providing students athletes with a platform for sports competitions. The HKSSF also collaborates with the NSAs and establishes a system of athletes training to raise the standard and performance of the student representatives in the All China Secondary School Students Games, Inter-port and other international competitions, which is an important element of nurturing young athletes.