Forcing young students to repeat years banned under new proposal

Students below fifth grade will no longer be required to repeat school years, the spokesperson of the Executive Council (ExCo) and Secretary for Administration and Justice, André Cheong, introduced yesterday.
The new policy, introduced as a draft executive regulation, will start operating from this September. It also includes a change to establish a maximum proportion of students at any school that may be asked to repeat a grade.
According to the draft regulation, there will be a ban on schools retaining students below the fifth grade for an extra year at the same grade. Meanwhile, grade retention after that grade will be limited to a certain percentage of total students.
The maximum percentage of grade retention for both 5th and 6th grade students is set at 4%, and overall junior high students is set at 8%.
Regarding the reason behind the new retention system, it was suggested the fourth-grade students are at the stage of developing comprehensive and complex intelligence, and a mandatory retention system won’t be helpful for their studies, according to Lou Pak Sang, the director of the Education and Youth Affairs Bureau (DESJ), who was at yesterday’s press conference as well.
“Retention brings students greater frustration” and may lead to disillusionment with the education system, added Lou.
However, the government has left some room for schools to hold students back a year. If a student is significantly off progress or records a below-acceptable attendance rate, negotiations can be held between the school and the parents to agree on whether the child should repeat the year. This special retention will not be counted as part of the stipulated percentage.
The ExCo has also discussed a draft executive regulation governing special education.
The number of students receiving special education is growing each year. The DSEJ head explained that it is a good trend because it means parents are more open to ability evaluation. Such evaluation can not only tell whether a child is underdeveloped, it can also tell if a child is performing above the level of his or her peers.
The number of underdeveloped students has reached 1,795 this year. Also, at the start of this academic year, there will be 48 schools participating in the government’s mixed education scheme.
Mixed education is a practice that encourages integrating students with special education needs, often abbreviated as SEN, into mainstream classrooms.
With the new rules in place, only severely challenged students will be placed in dedicated settings. Apart from SEN students, top-performing students will also be integrated into regular classrooms. However, they can skip grades when they are considered to be significantly ahead of their classmates.
The aim of mixing SEN students with mainstream students is to allow them to learn from and interact with the society alongside everybody else, according to the government.
Lou stressed that mechanisms are in place, with support from professionals, to assess student’s ability as top-performing, regular or SEN students. Anthony Lam & Staff Reporter