Letters | Carrie Lam policy address: where are the education reforms?

Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor has just released her fifth and final policy address this term. With at least 89,200 people having left Hong Kong for good since June 2020, she failed to address the elephant in the room.

Many people leaving the city cite education as a cause. The problems with Hong Kong’s education system do not need much explanation. Many of us have slogged through the excruciating and mind-numbing journey and somehow miraculously survived.

The Chinese government has effected groundbreaking reform by amending its Law on the Protection of Minors, which came into force in June. As the newly revised law protects students’ right to play and rest after a hard day at school, the “double reduction” policy was announced to significantly reduce student workload and clamp down on the private tuition industry.

These bold policies seem unfathomable to our proudly laissez-faire government. The chief executive who has earned a reputation as a “good fighter” must not back down on revamping our shambolic education system. Or she would risk disappointing the Chinese government and her people for launching a bizarre patriotic curriculum based on rote learning.