What interests me about the recent allegations of sexual bias in secondary school selection is that they suggest that Hong Kong's Equal Opportunities Commission is one of the few in the world that considers a form of affirmative action on behalf of a group or gender to be a bad thing.
Would such a practice be considered equally bad if - in the majority of cases - it was the girls who seemed to be benefitting? Does the commission take a blanket stance against any form of affirmative action in Hong Kong? I ask because in the West we've had decades of claims from women's organisations about how schools are unfair to girls, and only recently the beginnings of an acknowledgment that it is, in fact, boys who are doing worse both in tertiary education admissions and in secondary school results.
Would it be too much for the commission to take the next step and ask why our schools seem to be failing our boys? Perhaps even to attempt to do something about it? GARY POLLARD Mid-Levels
