Let us just take the case of a typical teacher-librarian in a school who looks after the central library, teaches all classes the necessary library skills and raises students' interest in reading.

To the profession's dismay, the EMB adopts an ostrich-like attitude and has never addressed the hardship and the workload of teacher-librarians despite complaints. Whether in a 12-class, 24-class or even 36-class school, the current system provides only one teacher-librarian for the job. The EMB has never examined the ratio of teacher-librarian to classes and library books to provide assistance to teacher-librarians of classes of 24 and more.

The EMB conveniently passes the ball to school authorities. Without a uniform system, teacher-librarians are at the mercy of school managements. Some come to their aid by employing teaching assistants to lend a hand, but some deploy resources in other areas. What a farce in this modern age. Teacher-librarians are maltreated by laissez-faire practices and an uncaring attitude by some school managements.

If there is no fair and practical solution there will be more tragedies in the teaching profession.

NAME AND ADDRESS SUPPLIED

Language issue made clear to students

I refer to the article 'Doubts on call for language autonomy' (Education Post, September 9), commenting on the release of the draft report of the committee on bilingualism of Chinese University of Hong Kong and wish to draw your readers' attention to an error of fact in the article.

The article states that 'the university ... last year ... announce[d] an increase in courses in English to boost its internationalisation plan'. This is simply untrue. Last year, the university merely clarified the implementation guidelines related to its longstanding policy on bilingualism: if a department wishes to admit non-local undergraduate major students who are non-Chinese speaking, it must undertake to provide sufficient courses taught in English so that these students can complete the graduation requirements for that major subject.

Each department is completely free to decide whether it wishes to admit such students, but must make its decision known to potential applicants at the start of the application cycle.

EMILY HUI, Chinese University of Hong Kong

Squeaky wheel still needs to be heard

Thanks to Steven Sidley for the reassurance that the 'squeaky wheel is getting some grease' when it comes to enhancing Hong Kong students' phonemic awareness 'Reminder irrelevant in context of policies', (Education Post, September 16).

The Primary Literacy Programme in Reading (PLPR) looks and sounds terrific, but so did the 1993 publication from the Education Department entitled 'The Teaching of Phonics', and the colourful 'Phonics in ELT' teaching charts that they produced in 1999.

Rest assured, Mr Sidley, that I will continue to roll the squeaky wheels until all of Hong Kong's children are introduced to English literacy via sound techniques. Unfortunately, government policies and publications do not have a good record when it comes to changing the educational reality in Hong Kong.

Let's hope that the PLPR can 'break the spell' in all those schools with entrenched practices of memorised dictation - the primary enemy of sound alphabetic reading practices.

PAULINE BUNCE

Heng Fa Chuen

Remember there's only one original

The article 'Going Dutch' (Education Post, September 16) caused periodic giggle fits throughout most of last weekend. It said: 'Teachers receive(d) a crash course on mimicking the style of one of the world's most famous painters (Van Gogh) taking notes on how to pass on the skills to their students'.

Now perhaps I am missing something here, but aren't the creative subjects we teach at school, including painting, sculpture, poetry/story writing, music, dance etc supposed to focus primarily on encouraging, well, creativity.

That aside, once we have enough Van Gogh cloners, we can presumably hold competitions to see which one is the best. Indeed, we could include the great man's works in such contests. I assume he'd win every time, but he could have an off day, or one of his early 'pre-Paris' period pieces could be entered which might catch the judges off guard.

Incidentally, the scenario reminds me of the old Trivial Pursuit question: 'Who once came third in a Charlie Chaplin lookalike contest?' Marvellous.

JASON ALI

Sheung Wan