Closures disrupt clinical practice

Student teachers hit by school closures

Sars has disrupted the completion of university programmes that involve practical and clinical work, including teacher education, nursing and medicine.

Worst hit are students in postgraduate education programmes who had just started or not even begun their teaching practice when schools were ordered to close late last month.

Two hundred students in the Hong Kong Institute of Education's full-time primary postgraduate diploma in education programme (PGDE) were due to complete their remaining eight-week practice by next month. They were expecting to resume their training before Easter but as primary schools remain closed until further notice uncertainty now hangs over if or when they can continue their training.

'It will be an incomplete exercise for them if they cannot resume their training. Some students want to try out the experience they have gained in the previous practice,'' said Grace Mak Chiu-ling, principal lecturer in the department of educational policy and administration. She added that 36 schools had agreed to take on the students for teaching practice next month, should they reopen.

'The worst scenario is for students to graduate six months later. But that is unlikely. Our teaching practice period is already much longer than the required minimum number of eight weeks,'' she said. She and her colleagues are considering alternatives, such as having students demonstrate their teaching ability and be assessed on campus rather than on the basis of their teaching performance in schools.