Parents who have questions or concerns about the placement of their children through the Secondary School Places Allocation (SSPA) system can call the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC) at 2511-8211. Complaint forms can also be downloaded at the EOC website : http://www.eoc.org.hk

"As conciliation of the cases may take time, parents should first arrange for the admission of their children to another school or complete all registration formalities according to the allocation slip, "says Dr. Priscilla CHUNG, Director of Gender of the EOC.

The EOC announced the findings of a Formal Investigation into the SSPA system in August 1999 and had found the system to discriminate against individual boys and girls.

The following are the discriminatory elements found in the SSPA system :

- Male and female students have different gender curves for scaling purpose ;

- Separate queuing for boys and girls resulted in different band-cutting scores for female and male students ;

- Co-educational schools are required to admit a fixed proportion of boys and girls.

Enquiry: EOC Hotline      25118211