My Take

Teaching Chinese properly is the key to helping ethnic minorities in Hong Kong

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The most important mission of education for ethnic minority students is to graduate from secondary school and function successfully in our economy. So, teach them the Chinese language properly. Photo: Nora Tam

Alex Lo has been an SCMP columnist since 2012, covering major issues affecting Hong Kong and the rest of China.

Published: 2:11am, 4 Nov 2015Updated: 2:11am, 4 Nov 2015

Call me naive but there is a straightforward way to help ethnic minorities to mitigate the discrimination they face in society: teach their children the Chinese language properly and expect them to graduate from secondary school instead of dropping out.

This is the most important mission of education for these students, so they can function successfully in our economy. It is simply good economics.

Our labour force made up of predominantly ethnic Chinese is shrinking because our society is ageing fast.

But there is a "youth bulge" among ethnic minorities. They make up 6.4 per cent of the Hong Kong population, according to the 2011 census. A whopping 40 per cent of the local Pakistani population and 20 per cent of Indian and Nepalese are under 15 years old, compared with just 12 per cent of ethnic Chinese.

As pointed out in a letter to the Post yesterday, many who learn Chinese do so as a third, fourth or even fifth language. Yet, there are no standards or benchmarks for public schools to make sure students learn the language properly.

Many were previously called "designated schools" for minorities. But, while that label was abolished two years ago, the segregation system is intact and the integration of minorities into mainstream schools has been woefully inadequate.