Chinese-language help for Hong Kong’s ethnic minority pupils lacks transparency, NGO finds
Advocacy group urges officials to boost monitoring based on a discrepancy between funding that is received and information made available to public
Some schools in Hong Kong that get government funding to help their ethnic minority pupils learn Chinese were lacking in transparency and accountability, an NGO said on Monday.
The local advocacy group Unison called on officials to boost their monitoring to ensure funding information was available to the public and non-Chinese speaking parents of pupils.
Between July and September last year, Unison studied school websites as well as the published annual plans and reports of primary and secondary schools in Yau Tsim Mong, Yuen Long and Eastern districts.
In total, the group looked at 97 primary and 86 secondary schools. The annual funding for the Chinese-language programmes targeting ethnic minority pupils ranged between HK$1.5 million per year (US$192,000) and HK$50,000, depending on the number of non-Chinese children in a school.
Unison project manager Mandy Cheuk Man-po said the study found 28 primary and 19 secondary schools indicated on their websites or uploaded documents that they had received Education Bureau funding for either Enhanced Chinese Learning and Teaching for Non-Chinese Speaking Students or After-school Support for Non-Chinese Speaking Students in Learning Chinese.