Seven years after most secondary schools were directed to teach in Chinese, the so-called mother-tongue education policy remains a hard sell. Despite evidence that the academic performance of students from Chinese-medium schools has improved and their command of English is no worse than comparable students from English-medium ones, most parents are still sceptical of its merits.
That is the background behind the various measures proposed by an Education Commission working group yesterday to finesse the policy and the system of allocating secondary students to schools.
Secondary schools will continue to have two streams, with a quarter of them teaching in English and the remainder teaching in Chinese. But in a significant move to fudge their differences, Chinese-medium schools will be allowed to progressively use more of their class time for English learning activities - 15 per cent for Form One, 20 per cent for Form Two and 25 per cent for Form Three.
The flexibility is aimed at helping students to get used to learning some or all subjects in English from Form Four, should the schools decide to make the switch. For schools that opt to continue to use Chinese as the teaching language through senior secondary, it is hoped that the measure will expose students to more English and help them achieve the minimum standards for university admission.
To help schools improve the teaching of English and Putonghua, the government will inject $1.1 billion into the Language Fund. About $900 million of this will be earmarked for school-based English enhancement schemes, with each school able to get up to $500,000 a year for six years. Three years after launching their respective schemes, participating schools will be required to achieve agreed performance targets to be eligible for further funding. The targets are proven improvements in the capabilities of their English teaching force or their students' academic achievements in the language.
The requirement for measurable improvement is nothing short of revolutionary in Hong Kong, where schools have never been required to account for the resources they are given. It will put pressure on schools and teachers, and some may fail to measure up. But no other areas of human activities can expect relentless increases in resources without producing the goods. If the introduction of a result-oriented culture succeeds in motivating schools and teachers to raise their English teaching standards, this one-off exercise will have more long-lasting effects than increasing recurrent grants to allow each school to hire one or two more English teachers.
