The Education Bureau is not doing enough to help ethnic minorities integrate into society and must provide better Chinese language teaching, the Equal Opportunities Commission says in its latest report.
Chairman of the watchdog, Lam Woon-kwong, demanded the bureau ensure equal access to quality education for ethnic minority students.
'Education is the key for many of these families to escape from poverty. But since these students cannot read and write Chinese, they are deprived of the opportunity to have better education and many even leave school at an earlier age.
'In Hong Kong, how can one leave school at 15 or 16 with difficulties in reading and writing Chinese and find a decent job?' Lam said.
Noting that there are about 10,000 ethnic minority students in Hong Kong, Lam said most of them failed to get a place in the highly sought-after English-medium primary and secondary schools due to their poor scores in Chinese.
Many of these students are forced to study in 28 designated primary and secondary schools where a majority of the pupils are from ethnic minorities.