The Education and Manpower Bureau is not doing enough to help ethnic minority and returnee students prepare for when Chinese becomes compulsory under the new senior secondary curriculum, a prominent principal said this week.
Veronica Ma Kit-ching, principal of Marymount Secondary School in Happy Valley, accused the EMB of failing to provide adequate transitionary measures for schools that have traditionally offered French as an alternative for non-Chinese-speaking students.
Chinese language is one of four core subjects students will be compelled to study when students currently in Form One reach Form Four. The other three subjects are English, maths and liberal studies.
Students will continue to be able to study French and other foreign languages, but only as an elective in addition to Chinese and English.
Ms Ma said her school, along with traditional elite schools La Salle College, St Mary's Cannossian College and St Joseph's College, had met with Deputy Secretary for Education and Manpower Chris Wardlaw but had not yet received a follow-up.
'I have been told over the phone that they are still discussing this matter but it is already three or four months,' Ms Ma said.
Some of the students from Chinese families would be able to cope with the Chinese curriculum but the majority of ethnic minorities students lacked the family support.