Consultant says HK education system needs overhaul

Students in Hong Kong

Philip Yeung, consultant to the vice-rector for academic affairs at the University of Macau, says that Hong Kong’s education sector needs a clear vision through which to effectively channel education funds and donations, in order to give poorer students a chance at a meaningful education.
Yeung does not accredit the failings of the education sector to a shortfall in funding but to an ineffective distribution of these funds. He says that the system needs to be reworked and not propped up, telling the South China Morning Post that “educational philanthropy is blooming [in Hong Kong]; every tycoon worth the epithet has an education foundation to his name.”
Among the agencies catering to – as Yeung puts it – “needy students” are the richly endowed Quality Education Fund and the Jockey Club’s education trust.
Yeung marks the distinction between the offerings to public schools and to elite colleges.  The funds offered to elite schools are now being diverted to fee-charging Direct Subsidy Scheme Schools, a choice which is widening the gap between the two systems and leaving “only crumbs for the poor.”
And the difference between the educational offerings affects the choice of teaching strategies among educational institutions.
In order to offer their students the opportunity to be accepted into a publicly funded university, poorer schools are left with only one option: ceaselessly drilling their students in preparation for the do-or-die public examination, which Yeung says “is hopelessly beyond their reach.”
For the typical poor neighborhood school, as many as 95 percent of students have little chance of being admitted to a publicly funded university.
The problem with the do-or-die approach is that it starves students of “educational excitement” – with precious formative years lost on meaningless repetitive exercises.
Yeung says that bureaucrats could be a part of the solution if they were to allow experimental classrooms to coexist within the public system. “If they can’t solve the problem, they should at least let others repair the system,” he added. Staff reporter