The switch to mother- tongue teaching was made for political reasons and not to benefit students, a language expert has claimed.
Anita Poon Yuk-kang is studying language in education policies for her doctorate at the Queensland University of Technology in Australia.
She told a conference here that educators had been urging the switch to Cantonese since the 1980s.
'Why didn't the Education Department adopt it at that time?' Ms Poon said. 'Firm guidance was issued to order schools to switch to mother-tongue education just a few months before the handover.
'Although it has its own educational value, to a large extent it [the switch] was a political move.' She was speaking at the International Language in Education Conference hosted by the University of Hong Kong.
Ms Poon said the switch to compulsory Chinese-medium teaching marked the end of bilingual education in Hong Kong.
'This is counter to social values and social needs,' she said.