Full subsidies for kindergarten education would improve their status and boost learning in Hong Kong
Paul Stapleton says with research on early childhood development now showing the importance of preschool, the Hong Kong government should invest in giving children a head start
Tien's comments about English standards and declining competitiveness in the city are not new. They reflect the ever-present concern that our education system is not doing a good enough job in teaching the world's de facto lingua franca.
Although that may seem absurd, it is not necessarily incongruous, given new understanding about intellectual development. Research in early childhood education increasingly reveals that it is the period from birth to about the age of five that the brain is at its most malleable and able to learn at a remarkable rate. Research also informs us that the steady decline in learning ability as we advance towards our teenage years reflects the decreasing plasticity of the brain. In other words, in terms of value for money, teaching a five-year-old trumps teaching a young adult every time.
If all children had a year of English immersion in kindergarten, this could be worth as much as multiple years of English classes in primary and secondary school
Actually, most of us are aware of young children's astonishing ability to learn, via our own experiences acquiring second and third languages, for example. Many parents are willing to part with their hard-earned money to send their kids to kindergarten in the knowledge that great benefits can be accrued.
With this background, the government's policy of only partially subsidising kindergarten education while also setting a low median point for teachers' salaries sends a message that kindergarten is not so important.