Hold all Hong Kong schools to the same English standards, or risk widening the wealth gap
- The standard and instruction of English varies widely across Hong Kong schools, an educational disparity that cuts neatly across income classes and reinforces the wealth gap. It’s time to address this and give every child in Asia’s ‘world city’ a chance
In Hong Kong’s market-based system, each school aims to attract the best students, with parents also competing to get their children into the best schools possible. This competitive process transforms school administrators into sales managers. At the top of the food chain are the astoundingly expensive international schools, which exist outside the band-ranking universe.
But even bottom-ranked schools need to attract students, so administrators welcome children from the mainland. But they often start off with a poorer command of English, if at all, and lack motivation to read English books, and this forces teachers to dumb down instruction.
Dr Mark Bray, Unesco’s chair of comparative education and a former dean of education at the University of Hong Kong, charitably calls this “research fatigue”, but my experience tells me something different.
The schools simply do not want any bad news getting out. Students’ English proficiency may be poor, but dumbed-down exams present the illusion that everything is fine. The result is an institutionalised disparity between the upper and lower income classes.
The wealthy do not bother debating this. They know the real world is competitive and judgmental, and that English proficiency is part of that judgment. They want their children to have a great future. So their children go to international schools, take standardised tests and go on to top universities.
Los Angeles native Robert Badal is an author, teacher and former corporate consultant and CEO speech-writer