Following is the transcript of remarks by the Secretary for Innovation and Technology, Mr Nicholas W Yang, on the IT Innovation Lab in Secondary Schools Programme at a media session after attending radio programmes this morning (March 5):

Reporter: Will the introduction of the IT Innovation Lab in Secondary Schools Programme increase the heavy workload of current school teachers? They may have to organise more extra-curricular activities and maintain their newly added IT equipment.

Secretary for Innovation and Technology: I want to point out that the IT Innovation Lab is an extension and an expansion of an existing programme, Enrichment IT Programme in Secondary Schools, which we started back in 2015/16. It is a programme targeted at secondary schools. At that time, we targeted eight schools and then we opened all the activities to all the other secondary schools on a voluntary basis. But what surprised us is that the activities were participated by over 140 secondary schools. So that really was a pleasant surprise for us. Through that experience, we decided this extra-curricular activity is actually very helpful to the secondary school students. I want to emphasise, all these activities are extra-curricular. When we decide it, we formulate this, we want to provide more resources to the secondary schools so that they can conduct more extra-curricular activities that will enable students to benefit from the new innovation and technology areas. That's the whole idea. If any school would like to embrace this kind of initiative into their curricular portion, then we will work with them together with the Education Bureau to see how it can be done. I want to emphasise that it is an extension of the existing initiative. The intention is not to increase any so-called resources constraints on the secondary schools.

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