IF the pay and status of school teachers is too low to attract the best, most responsible educators for the children of Hong Kong, and many parents would think it logical to improve salaries and raise the status. Bureaucrats and accountants follow a different logic. Their solution is to aim for lower quality teachers.
It is now almost two years after Education Commission Report No 5 recommended a slow shift from a totally non-graduate primary school teaching corps to a 35 per cent graduate profession, implying a gradual raising of standards. The Education Department, however, is trying to cope with its endemic teaching shortage by lowering standards still further. This year it has successfully filled places at colleges of education by admitting 149 students - about one-third of the total intake - who would not have qualified in the past.
Worse, many of these new teachers will be foisted on secondary school students, where they can teach even core subjects, such as mathematics or Chinese, up to Form Three.
True, some will be directed to ''non-academic'' subjects, such as music or art. However, this will only lower still further the status and standards of these already neglected aspects of education.
The Education Department is defending itself with bureaucratic double-talk of the most unconvincing kind. In explaining its position to the Legislative Council education panel yesterday, the department argued that the average Certificate of Education Examination points scored by this year's intake was only a fraction lower than last year's. The difference between the 1992 average of 11.9 points and the 11.4 points this year was claimed to be statistically insignificant.
Not so. Last year's students had to pass at least six subjects at one sitting. This year's entrants needed only four. The points comparison is therefore invalid. In any case, teachers say standards have been falling for years. The present change has merely accelerated the process.
