Education officials failing Hong Kong children

I have begun to wonder whether the Education Bureau is still part of the government, or secretly declared independence when I wasn't looking. It certainly seems to be pursuing its own agenda.

The first sign that something might be amiss came with the controversy over national education. We can go a bit easy on Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying and Education Minister Eddie Ng Hak-kim because they inherited this unexploded ordinance from their predecessors. That said, they hardly helped themselves by being slow to recognise disaster as it approached and handling it clumsily when they did.

But what about the officials who were on board all the way through? Did no one warn their political masters that they were sailing into troubled waters?

Once Leung finally grasped the seriousness of the issue and sent the doughty Anna Wu Hung-yuk in to bury the subject, reports suggest there was last-ditch resistance from a hard core of zealots who wanted to stick to the original game plan.

Full marks for patriotism, perhaps, if not for political sensitivity.

Now we have the matter of the subvention to the English Schools Foundation, which seems to have reached a climax. It is common knowledge that some in the education hierarchy dislike all international schools, but seem to hold a special grudge against the ESF. Having shamefully frozen the subvention many years ago, officials would now appear to have achieved their dream of ending it altogether.

Yet, no one has made a case to explain why all children of permanent Hong Kong residents should not enjoy the same level of subsidy, irrespective of whether they go to local, ESF or international schools.