Departing exam chief George Pook's plea to parents on education reforms

Parents and students must stop seeing a university place as the only route to success if reforms to the city's education system are to succeed, a key architect of the new Diploma of Secondary Education said as he prepares to leave Hong Kong.

In an interview with the South China Morning Post, George Pook said the diploma - one of the cornerstones of a wholesale reform of the curriculum aimed at breaking the spoon-feeding learning culture that has long characterised education in the city - is expected to refine people's views of examinations and education. But change cannot happen overnight, said Pook, the outgoing director of public examinations at the Examination and Assessment Authority.

The diploma and the wider reforms, including a move to offer all pupils six years of secondary classes, would work only with the co-operation of all stakeholders in the education system, including the government, parents, students and schools.

"People need realistic expectations of what students can achieve. There are some parents who have very high ambitions [without] keeping in touch with students' genuine capabilities," said the Briton, who joined the authority in 2009. This year's secondary school graduates were the first to sit the diploma, but while 20,000 of the 72,000 candidates met the minimum standard for subsidised university places, just 14,800 were given a full university offer.

Pook said the new exams were never designed to allow everyone to enter university, but rather to give students with a range of abilities a basis to plan their future.

He said extending the number of university places may not be the way forward, pointing to the example of the UK, where bold reforms had created more university places but many students had graduated with "more debt than career prospects".