Primary school principals fear there will be a shortage of qualified language teachers because they cannot afford to replace those who have failed the controversial benchmark test.
In the latest tests held in March, the overall results of teacher candidates dropped sharply. The pass-rate in the English listening and Putonghua Pinyin papers fell by 20 per cent compared with September, with only 44 per cent and 43 per cent passing each respectively, the Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority announced this week.
The results in the Language Proficiency Assessment for Teachers test leave 190 English and 61 Putonghua teachers banned from teaching their language subjects starting from September.
The numbers of teachers taking the tests were 2,141 in English, and 954 in Putonghua.
Dr Ho Kwok-cheung, deputy head of the Department of Chinese at Hong Kong Institute of Education, said the poor results may be due to the fact that the stronger candidates had sat the tests earlier.
Lam Seung-wan, chairman of the Aided Primary School Heads' Association, said many primary schools would not have the resources to hire qualified language teachers if they transferred those who failed the test to other jobs.
All language teachers have to meet the benchmark before September next year to continue teaching their language subjects. Schools are not obliged to keep those who entered the profession in 2003 and have not passed the test by August this year.