My Take | Next education chief or not, Agnes Chan knows the system’s faults
With a PhD in education from Stanford and having written books on what’s best for students, she should be a shoo-in to replace the bumbling Eddie Ng
Is she or isn’t she? Retired Canto-pop singer Agnes Chan Miling has been rumoured to be the next education minister. Then she told veteran journalist Man Cheuk-fei that she had never been approached for the top post.
I have no idea if Chan – who has a PhD in education from Stanford University – would be suitable for the job. But after five years of Eddie Ng Hak-kim, anyone who has not been lobotomised would make a better education secretary.
The rumours have helped propel Chan’s new Chinese-language book – 40 Education Proposals: Bring Happiness Back to Hong Kong Students – onto the local bestsellers’ list. Her previous book was about how she successfully got her three sons into Stanford, which has an acceptance rate of less than 5 per cent. Tiger mum or education guru? Who knows? But the new book certainly shows a person who has a good understanding of the current education system, and its many shortcomings. It also proposes practical remedies:
- Make the Basic Competency Assessment (BCA) – which replaces the hated Territory-wide System Assessment (TSA) for Primary Three and Six and Secondary Three – voluntary for schools.
- Make the controversial liberal studies in the Diploma of Secondary Education (DSE) a voluntary rather than mandatory subject.
- Only use pass or fail for secondary school graduates. Only those who wish to attend university need to take DSE exams.
- Introduce a regulatory scheme to control for-profit tutorial schools.
- Reduce unnecessary teaching materials to lessen pressure on students.
- Teach Chinese in both Cantonese and Putonghua and use the same teaching materials for both.
- Review the fairness of public subsidies for private and direct-subsidy schools.
- Introduce optional courses with academic credits on traditional Chinese arts, dance, music and martial arts.
One last proposal is to make children attend only the schools in their districts; in other words, abolish long-standing elitism in our school system.