He also accused the Education and Manpower Bureau of providing parents with inadequate information about funding for pre-school education and failing to keep records of the number of ethnic minority children in schools.

His accusations came after the EMB failed to provide a Legco meeting last week with information about how many ethnic minority pupils had 'completed a learning stage or dropped out of school'.

Deputy Secretary for Education and Manpower Bernadette Linn Hon-ho rejected the accusation, saying the government did not keep separate statistics on the number of school-age ethnic minority children because it did not want them 'singled out'.

'We don't keep records of ethnic minority children because our planning for schools is premised on our projection of the overall student population. Moreover, racial origin and nationality does not affect one's eligibility for school admission. We don't wish them to be singled out in our education system,' she said.

Ms Linn claimed that integration had been successful. 'Mainstream schools are allocated only a handful of ethnic minority students and they have been doing a great job with the support of the government,' she said.

According to the 2001 census, the school attendance rate of ethnic minority children aged three to five was 86 per cent, compared with 94 per cent for locals.

However, the figures do not give a true picture of the position of Southeast Asian children because 'ethnic minorities' in the report include all non-Chinese children.

Mr Cheung said many Southeast Asian parents did not send their children to kindergartens.

'The government is totally ignorant on the matter. It does not even keep records about the number of ethnic minority students in Hong Kong,' he said. 'This is ridiculous.'

Ms Linn said the government had always encouraged ethnic minority parents to send their children to kindergartens because early exposure to Chinese language might help integration.

'We have already passed on this message and informed parents of the financial assistance available through non-government organisations,' she said.

Chow Sau-fong, executive director of the concern group Unison, said many ethnic minority parents did not know how to apply for financial assistance and those who did faced a time lag between paying fees and getting subsidies.

'Parents have to wait for more than two months before they get the subsidies,' Ms Chow said. 'This is too much for them as they tend to earn far less than local people.'

Chong Suk-ping, vice-principal of the bilingual Western Pacific Kindergarten, which has been serving the Southeast Asian community in Tsim Sha Tsui for more than 20 years, said that more than 70 per cent of her students were from ethnic minority families.

However, only 40 per cent of the children went on to mainstream primary schools because of the language barrier.

'There is a need for after-school language workshops and activities for both children and parents, but it has long been overlooked by the government,' she said.