Hong Kong’s ethnic minority parents are battling information gap on schools

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Worshippers at the Sikh Temple in Wan Chai. Parents from Hong Kong’s ethnic minority communities would benefit from more information on school websites regarding support offered to non-Chinese-speaking pupils. Photo: Edmond So

Published: 4:15pm, 7 Jun 2018Updated: 12:32pm, 15 Oct 2020

The Education Bureau released the results of the central allocation for primary one admission last week I congratulate the children (nearly 70 per cent) who were allocated to one of their first three school choices (“Tears of joy after fierce battle for primary school places”, June 3).

Making an informed school choice is often not too difficult for most parents, as the market is flooded with Chinese admission guides. Parents who cannot read Chinese, on the other hand, have few channels to seek school information to make an informed choice.

A child practises writing Chinese at an activity organised by the Zubin Foundation. The Education Bureau has encouraged ethnic minority parents to immerse their children in a Chinese-speaking environment, but this can prove challenging. Photo: Zubin Foundation

Why schools are failing ethnic minority pupils over Cantonese lessons

The primary school profiles published by the Education Bureau have thus become an important source of information for them. Yet, questions remain over whether the school profiles provide adequate and useful information for ethnic minority parents and students.

I recently spoke to a Pakistani woman who helped choose a primary school for her niece. She said that the bureau’s school profiles are handy, as information on all schools in each district are grouped together.

Yet, she discovered that even among schools that had admitted non-Chinese-speaking students, some would not include information regarding the support and related measures offered.

For instance, she wanted to know the ratio of non-Chinese students in each school, so as to refrain from choosing schools with a disproportionate number of ethnic minority students, a phenomenon not conducive to Chinese learning.