Top students in Band One English-medium secondary schools perform no better than their counterparts in low band Chinese-medium ones in subjects like history and science, a government study on medium of instruction has revealed. The results back the government's position that the vast majority of students in Hong Kong are better off learning in their mother-tongue. But elite schools and the advocates of English-medium schooling argue that the study only presents one side of the picture and highlights the defects of the secondary school places allocation system. The study, carried out by Hau Kit-tai, chair professor of the Department of Educational Psychology at Chinese University of Hong Kong, will form the basis of the Education Commission's review of medium of instruction next year. Since 1998, the government has required schools to educate in Chinese unless their teachers and students can teach and learn effectively in English - 223 secondary schools were ordered to switch to teaching in Chinese, while the remaining 114 were allowed to continue instruction in English. Professor Hau has been tracking the performance of 10,000 secondary students since the mid-1990s. Schools were compared within each of the five bands in the old banding system. In contrast to expectations, the findings indicate that there is only a marginal difference between the junior secondary students of English-medium and Chinese-medium schools in their standards of English and Chinese. Form One to Three students taught in Chinese were also found to significantly outperform their counterparts in most non-language subjects. The performance gap between the two groups is especially wide in low banding schools. 'It is to our surprise to find that in subjects such as history, geography and science, the test scores of students from Band One English-medium schools are similar to those in Band Three and Four Chinese-medium schools,' Professor Hau said. The students of Chinese-medium schools also improved significantly in non-language subjects over the three-year period. But those taught in English demonstrated minimal progress. But his study also showed that students from Band One English-medium schools eventually caught up with their counterparts when they took Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examinations. 'This only happened to the cream of the crop in English-medium schools. We can only attribute their good public exam results to their hard work because the findings showed no sign of them gradually adapting to their school's teaching approach,' Professor Hau said. The study indicated that English-medium schools were only suitable for a small group of top students, he said. 'The results support the policy. Schools that do not meet the government's threshold should not be allowed to teach in English. Otherwise, their students will be sacrificed,' he said. He also suggested immersing primary students in an English environment for a prolonged period to smooth their transition to English-medium secondary schools. However, Rosalind Chan Lo-sai, chairman of the Association of English Medium Secondary Schools, said it was understandable for students from English-medium schools to have learnt less than their counterparts because they had to master English language at the same time. Ms Chan said Professor Hau would be able to see that students of English-medium schools fared much better than the others if he extended his study to their performance at university. She believed there would be an increasing need for English-medium schools and urged the government to give schools the autonomy in deciding their medium of instruction. 'Children's English proficiency will be much higher as parents are more aware of its importance and teachers' quality is improved,' she said. Lisa Yip Sau-wah, principal of Shatin Tsung Tsin Secondary School, said the findings affirmed that the current secondary school places allocation system - where the number of school bands was reduced from five to three - had resulted in a mismatch between schools and students. Many students who were not capable of learning in English were sent to English-medium schools, while some capable ones had to study in Chinese-medium schools. Stephen Hui Chin-yim, committee member of the Subsidised Secondary Schools Council, said results of a survey released by the council this week showed that less than one third of the subsidised schools intended to teach all subjects in English. 'If the government thinks that all schools would rush to switch to English when given the freedom to choose, our survey showed that this is not the case,' he said. Graphic: BAND16GAN