School offers best of east and west

IT WAS A showdown of the most cartoonish variety: Mickey Mouse and his Hong Kong Disneyland crew went toe-to-toe against the woefully-forgotten characters from Ocean Park.

Instigated by money-hungry management, the characters dueled outside the classrooms at Pui Kiu College. That was, until the aliens stepped in.

The outlandish skit at the new Direct Subsidy Scheme school on Lower Shing Mun Road in Tai Wai was a culmination of four weeks of language learning at the through train school's first 'SuperCharge' English camp. Five classes of Form One students competed for the chance to flaunt their dramatic talents at the school's open day for parents last Saturday, the battle for the hearts and wallets of Hong Kong's animation-loving youth being one of the groups chosen to perform in addition to a historic fashion show and dancing. Primary students performed music, singing and a Chinese poetry recitation.

Designed as a bridging programme, the SuperCharge camp was created to immerse Form One students in a lively, relaxed environment to prepare the school's first batch of students for a year of English-medium learning.

But it's not just English these students will have to master: Pui Kiu is a bilingual school, the medium of instruction being English and Putonghua, with primary students learning mostly in Putonghua and secondary students in English. Primary students will have two mornings reserved every week for instruction in English, which will include reading, drama and singing, and three mornings in Putonghua, incorporating general knowledge and maths.

The college is sponsored by the Pui Kiu Middle School Co Ltd, which has operated a private secondary school in North Point since 1946 and which turned DSS in 1991 and a government-aided school in Siu Sai Wan since 2000. The impetus behind the college is to create a school that has a creative curriculum with a strong focus on co-curricular activities to produce well-balanced, motivated and thoughtful students with a global outlook - everything that education reforms could want.