It’s no more efficient than Cantonese, but Putonghua still the long-term objective for all Hong Kong schools
Officials say that use of national language should be long-term goal for teaching Chinese in schools
The education authorities will press ahead with using Putonghua to teach Chinese as the long-term objective for all primary and secondary schools in Hong Kong, even though a consultative study found no evidence that this would be more efficient than using Cantonese.
The Education Bureau released the study on Monday, following strong public calls for its release after it was revealed that the Education University submitted the study to the bureau in September last year.
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The study was conducted by the university, formerly the Institute of Education, from March 2012 to February last year with an in-depth study of four local schools.
The study found students participated more actively when teachers used Cantonese as the medium of instruction.
The study found that students in Putonghua classes performed better academically than those in Cantonese classes, but noted that this could be affected by the fact that schools grouped better performing students into Putonghua classes.
The bureau omitted comments from teachers at the two primary and two secondary schools, as well as any comparison of performance between classes conducted in Putonghua and Cantonese.
The bureau said it did not release the full report because the omitted parts contained detailed information about the schools and teachers.
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“Nevertheless, as the ... study only focused on the examining of the specific cases among the schools ... there are limitation of its findings which may not be deemed as the ultimate conclusion of the subject,” the bureau said in a paper submitted to the Legislative Council on Monday.
“[The bureau] will continue to pursue the long-term vision of [using Putonghua to teach the Chinese language subject].”
A survey by the Standing Committee on Language Education and Research found that 72 per cent of 500 government-funded primary schools and 37 per cent of some 500 secondary schools had Chinese language lessons taught in Putonghua in the 2015/16 academic year.
Education sector lawmaker Ip Kin-yuen called on the bureau to suspend the long-term goal until it had been established that using Putonghua would be more effective. He also urged the government to release the full report.
Schools are free to choose whether to use Putonghua to teach Chinese.
