New curriculum in all schools in 2015

The revised curricular framework will only come into effect at all local schools during the 2015/2016 academic year, the Education and Youth Affairs Bureau (DSEJ) said. In the meantime a trial project will be extended to the primary education.
According to a DSEJ statement quoted by Portuguese-language newspaper Hoje Macau, seven local kindergartens have already jointed the plan this year but after September primary schools will also introduce the new curriculum.
The changes will also involve the definition in a bylaw of the basic “knowledge, skills, emotions, attitudes and values” that students must have at the end of each year. The goal is to make the Macau education more competitive in comparison with the neighbouring regions.
The new system will give more emphasis to the classes of Moral and Civic Education, Physical Education and Art Education “in the various education levels,” DSEJ told Macau Daily Times earlier this month.
The main goal is to prevent “the phenomenon of streaming art and science too early and not taking art and science concurrently.” As such, the bureau said, there will be a better balance between the two areas, “so as to promote the overall enhancement of students’ scientific and cultural literacy”.
Students and their parents will also be able to choose a bigger part of their classes, especially in secondary education, with “selective courses being attached enhanced importance”.
The curriculum will include more leisure activities “to develop students’ potential and characteristics,” the DSEJ said. “Students would get free time to practise sports or to get involved in artistic education,” Sou explained in January 2011.
In connection with this change, the academic year at local schools will become a 39-week schedule.
Currently the academic year in Macau must include a minimum of 180 days and 36 weeks. However, DSEJ is keen to increase the number of schooldays to 195.