To foster students’ interest in sports and promote a sporting culture in schools, in addition to the existing physical education curriculum, various government departments and organisations have been 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 amount 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 LCSD has implemented the School Sports Programme (SSP) since 2001. The SSP is organised by various 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 (HKSI) 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 Hong Kong Schools Sports Federation (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 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 trainings of the HKSSF and participating in competitions, school squad coaching fees as well as course fees and transportation costs for participating in the Outreach Coaching Programme (school squad training) and Joint School Sports Training Programme of HKSSF under the School Sports Programme of 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 2017/18 school year to encourage schools to open up their facilities to sports organisations for organising sports activities through a provision of additional subsidy. The objectives are to increase the provision of sports facilities, while enhancing the sporting culture in schools and encouraging students to develop a healthy sporting habit.
For details, please refer to Education Bureau Circular Memorandum No. 92/2022 on “Opening up School Facilities for Promotion of Sports Development Scheme” (Application for the 2022/23 School Year)” or contact us at 3509 8078.
https://www.cstb.gov.hk/file_manager/en/documents/policies/EDBCM22092E.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 sport 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 competition. 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 Inter-port, Asian and World competitions, which is an important element of nurturing young athletes.