The report also found that only about thirty percent of Hong Kong secondary school students were deriving any benefit from the English medium instruction and proposed that primary school students be assessed for language ability and streamed into Chinese or English medium secondary schools based on these assessments.  In September 1997, the Hong Kong government for the first time firmly advised all local public sector secondary schools to adopt Chinese as the medium of instruction, starting with their Secondary 1 intake in the 1998-99 school year and progressing each year to a higher level of secondary education.  (At Secondary 4 of the Chinese medium school, the medium of instruction can be changed to English at the discretion of the school authorities.)  Only schools satisfying certain criteria regarding students' language ability, teacher capability and support services were allowed to use, or continue to use, English as the medium of instruction.  In the end, only about thirty percent of the secondary school students with the best scores could study in the schools with English as the medium of instruction.  To help them choose secondary schools most suited to their children's language ability, parents were informed of their children's grouping and the medium of instruction adopted by individual schools.