Keep English targets in sight

The latest consultation on the medium of instruction in secondary schools has sparked a lively debate. Proposals to tighten the requirements on schools that want to teach junior secondary classes in English have been interpreted as another move by the government towards 'political correctness'.

Angry parents, concerned that their children would be deprived of the chance to receive an education in English, argue that schools should be allowed to decide their teaching language.

These sentiments must be appreciated and properly dealt with if the government is to win support for the controversial policy of requiring most secondary schools to teach in Chinese.

Most people have probably not read the consultation document. If they have, they will know that the mother-tongue education policy was 20 years in the making and was not formulated after the handover to please Beijing.

For many decades, secondary schools were allowed to choose their medium of instruction, and most chose English. But their choices were not made on the basis of professional assessments of their teachers and students' competency in the language.

To satisfy parents' strong desire for their children to learn in English, many staff members with poor skills in the language were allowed to teach in broken English to students who had to struggle to learn in a foreign tongue they had yet to master. The practice not only failed to help students develop good skills in English, it also caused great damage to their self-esteem.

Superficially, the mother-tongue policy has led to a drastic reduction in the number of English-medium secondary schools. In fact, schools are still allowed to choose their teaching language.