Secondary schools in Hong Kong close ranks to appeal for class size reduction amid fall in pupil numbers
- All secondary schools in city say class numbers should be frozen and sizes reduced as pupil numbers decline
- Teachers’ groups accuse government of failure to act in the face of ‘incessant and significant’ drop in pupil numbers
All 451 secondary schools in Hong Kong have joined forces to appeal to the education authorities to freeze the number of classes and reduce their size to cope with problems caused by a shrinking pupil population.
The call was made in an open letter to Secretary for Education Christine Choi Yuk-lin on Thursday by the Joint Committee of the Secondary School Councils and the Secondary School Heads Association of 18 Districts.
The groups, which represent all the secondary schools in the city, said that although the pupil population in Hong Kong had experienced an “incessant and significant drop”, the government was yet to introduce measures to cope with the situation.
“It can be foreseen that this will be a big blow to the education ecology. Besides directly affecting the stability of the development of education in Hong Kong, it will eventually have an impact on the students,” they wrote.
The Post earlier reported that more than 30,000 pupils withdrew from Hong Kong schools between October 2020 and last September amid a wave of emigration.
