Educators are concerned that the increasing emphasis on teachers' language skills is undermining their more rounded education and the importance of other subjects. Many universities are preparing to launch new postgraduate diplomas in English teaching in response to government requirements on entry qualifications for language teachers. Polytechnic University and Baptist University are launching postgraduate diploma programmes on English teaching while Chinese University will offer an MA. This follows last year's recommendations by the Standing Committee on Language Education and Research (Scolar) that from this summer, schools should recruit teachers with training in the subject and pedagogy. Only when schools fail to find these teachers should they recruit those with lesser qualifications. Open University is launching a postgraduate diploma in education that can be taken alone or as part of a joint programme including a bachelor of language studies (English) degree, as well as a 20-credit conversion programme for serving teachers who are not language majors or lack the relevant teacher training.But the unprecedented push for language training could lead to an imbalanced teacher training curriculum, according to David Grossman, dean of the Hong Kong Institute of Education's School of Foundations in Education. 'This counters the purpose of the all-round personal development embodied in the education reform. It isn't sensible to make language the core of the curriculum and may lead to the marginalisation of other subjects.' He warned that students with limited language abilities might opt for Chinese and English to gain better job security. 'The message the government has sent to schools is English is the only important subject. It will be difficult for us to maintain the faculty who can teach other subjects.'' From September, all new language teachers are required to meet the standard of the Language Proficiency Assessment Test (LPAT) - the benchmark test - and results of the latest one, held in March, are due out next week.
