By The drafting of the Special Education Needs Bill was completed on June 11, 2016. The offices of Legislative Councillors, Fernando Cheung and Dennis Kwok, moved the drafting exercise after completing research and public consultation. The Bill should be submitted as a private member bill sometime in the next legislative term.
I have researched comparative laws and policies, and analysed proposals for advancing the protection of special educational needs (“SEN”) for several years, and I have written about this in 2013. In 2014, my findings and publication were noted by the Hon. Fernando Cheung, functional constituency member of the Legislative Council for the social welfare sector:
The issues of SEN protection and SEN legislative reform have been brewing for a while and it pops up now and then in the news, especially around election periods. Nevertheless, it is uncertain when the Bill would be finally submitted to the Legislative Council for reading. Due to the current legislative and political climate, the Bill is expected to remain in limbo long after submission, and eventually lapse due to a lack of political will. A high level of public interest must be maintained for long periods to ensure legislators push through the Bill. Sadly, this kind of momentum is unforeseeable.
The Bill seeks to advance many SEN related policies. Even if the Bill is ultimately unsuccessful, these policies would still be effectively advanced if they were adopted by the Education Bureau and implemented across the schools of Hong Kong.
