Hong Kong schools need performance reviews, with or without TSA

Katherine Forestier welcomes the revamp of the despised schools testing, but cautions that it won’t solve the problem of over-drilling in Hong Kong’s education system, and that some form of system-wide assessment is still needed to enable improvements

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For our children’s sake, schools must still be held to professionally informed public account. Illustration: Craig Stephens

Published: 5:53pm, 22 Mar 2018Updated: 9:40pm, 22 Mar 2018

So the Hong Kong government has bowed further to public pressure on the much-hated Territory-wide System Assessment (TSA). From this year, primary schools need only enter a randomly selected 10 per cent of their Primary Three pupils to sit the annual test, with no school identified even to the adjudicators of the exercise, according to the Education Bureau’s announcement last week.

Schools can, however, choose to fully participate, a future can of worms if parents don’t want their children to take part, as some have already indicated, or if those schools persist in over-drilling for the test.

Will this policy move work, and how will it serve the best interests of children?

A bit of international perspective is useful. Hong Kong is far from alone in running system-wide tests towards the end of the various key stages of education – in its case, the TSA has been taken by children at Primary Three, Primary Six and Secondary Three, before the final public exams at Secondary Six.

Countries such as Australia and Britain have similar regimes, and similar controversies that have led to parents’ threats to boycott the tests. This is no coincidence, given that Hong Kong borrowed from these practices.

Children and their parents protest against the Territory-wide System Assessment (TSA) outside the government headquarters in Tamar, on February 11. Last week, the government announced changes to the test that are aimed at easing pressure on students and schools. Photo: Nora Tam