A PROPOSAL THAT SETS ambitious targets to boost language standards among Hong Kong students has been largely welcomed by educators and employers. But it has also provoked criticism over its failure to address the workload shouldered by language teachers. The Action Plan to Raise Language Standards in Hong Kong released last week by the government's advisory body on language policy, the Standing Committee on Language Education and Research (Scolar), recommends benchmarks be set to assess biliterate and trilingual ability at five key stages in primary and secondary schools. Students should be given absolute scores rather than grades relative to their counterparts to reflect their true performance. The consultation document also recommends that Chinese and English teachers be required to have both a degree in the relevant language as well as teacher training. Despite being vague on how language proficiency shapes up today compared with the past, committee chairman Michael Tien Puk-sun stressed that people had to 'face reality'. 'The spirit of the document is to ask Hong Kong people not to lie to themselves. We have to let everybody know what language standard we have to achieve and how much we have achieved. If there is a huge discrepancy between the two, we have to set a time frame to tackle the problem,' he said. The aim of the committee was to achieve a 100 per cent pass rate in A-level language subjects, he added. What is generally agreed among educators is that the Curriculum Development Council should set benchmarks for students to achieve at the end of the five key stages of schooling - Primary Three and Six, and Secondary Three, Five and Seven. The Hong Kong Examination and Assessment Authority is expected to complete in three years the Basic Competency Assessment (BCA), a low-stake assessment tool for enhancing learning and teaching in the first three stages. Schools welcomed the recommendations to use the two public exams to assess students' language standard in the last two key stages. They also agreed that performance should be measured by absolute scores. The revamped assessment mechanism, which would take the International English Language Testing System as its reference, is expected to be in place for the Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination in 2007 and A-levels in 2009. Employers would be involved in setting the standards. 'The proposal is in line with the international trend to set clear performance standards. It can also let us know where our students stand compared with their counterparts in other countries,' said Dr Anissa Chan Wong Lai-kuen, who chairs the Subsidised Secondary Schools Council. The recommendation that has proved the most controversial is the qualification requirements Scolar lays down for language teachers. It encourages schools to move towards deploying only teachers who have a Bachelor of Education degree in the relevant language subject, or a first degree in the language plus a postgraduate diploma or certificate in education with a major in that language. The more than 6,000 teachers who have not yet acquired the qualifications would be encouraged to do so within five years, with the help of an incentive grant of up to $30,000 each. Mr Tien regards qualifications as crucial because the committee's study showed teachers had the most direct impact on motivating students' interests in learning languages. Less than half of the students surveyed said they were keen to study Chinese and English. Education groups said that it was reasonable to require pre-service teachers to satisfy the requirements. However, they said that veteran teachers would be under too much pressure if they had to cope with the proposed requirements, and teaching. 'Why are the qualification requirements necessary if the benchmark is already established to qualify English and Putonghua teachers to teach the languages? Teachers should be allowed to choose to attain either one of them,' said Cheung Man-kwong, president of the Professional Teachers' Union. It was not fair to blame language teachers for their poor language proficiency because they did not choose to teach languages in the first place, he said. Many university graduates with good Chinese and English opted for business or joined other more rewarding professions in the 1980s or early 1990s, causing a shortage of language teachers. Teachers of other subjects were 'forced' to fill the vacancies. 'It should be the government's responsibility to attract more talent to teach languages at school. But that point was not touched on in the document,' Mr Cheung said. He was concerned that too many qualification requirements would deter those with potential to join or stay in the profession. The mounting pressure on teachers to professionally upgrade themselves would produce the opposite result, said Wong Kwan-yu, vice-president of the Hong Kong Federation of Education Workers. 'It has already become obvious that many teachers devote more time to studying than teaching. Their future students might benefit from this, but their current ones are already being sacrificed,' he said. Reducing teachers' workload was an issue that needed to be tackled more urgently than qualifications, teachers said. Pamela Young, a member of the Native English-speaking Teachers' Association (NESTA), said she was disappointed that the report made no mention of the impact of class sizes on language teaching. 'Classes of 42 are pedagogical suicide and anti-education. Until this single issue is resolved the government could organise 300 committees which last thousands of hours and nothing will change,' she said. Dr Chan said schools should be given a grant so that they could use it flexibly for professional training and hiring supply teachers to reduce their workload. 'Getting a postgraduate diploma does not necessarily mean that the teacher can teach much more effectively if their workload is too heavy. A good language learning environment can only be achieved if teachers have the room to plan lessons,' she said. She added that it was urgent for the government to review language teacher training places. At present, the demand seriously exceeds supply. Universities also tended to allocate the bulk of their resources to scientific research rather than languages. The committee was urged to take a broader view of language learning, rather than focusing only on language teachers. Cheung Pak-hong, the chairman of the concern group Education Convergence, said that the English language proficiency of non-language subject teachers who had to teach in English also needed to be assessed. This could be done in the form of lesson observation by government inspectors, he added. Uncertainties of the committee's future also prompted worries on how much of the recommendations would be implemented. After the consultation ends in late February the committee is to be incorporated into the Curriculum Development Council. No longer an independent advisory body reporting directly to the Education Commission, the committee would have less autonomy. Mr Cheung said: 'I sincerely hope that the proposal will be fully realised. But government policy tends to change each time new heads come. Before old policy can be implemented, new policy is already being discussed.' The consultation document Action Plan to Raise Language Standards in Hong Kong can be found at the Education and Manpower Bureau Web site, www.info.gov.hk/emb Have your say in our Mailbag by writing to education@scmp.com
