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Letters | Relax, Hong Kong parents: places in top schools don’t always mean better careers
- Competition to enter the few top-band secondary schools puts unnecessary pressure on students
- Studies show that able students in low-ranking schools feel more confident in their academic performance than similarly talented students in high-ranking schools
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Children in Hong Kong are an unhappy lot, burdened with heavy study pressure. The chief culprit could be the school banding system that has been in place for decades.
Given that band one schools are believed to be only about 10 per cent of the total 472 secondary schools in the city, barely a tenth of students can access the enviable elite schools. The rest, the majority, may beat themselves up for slacking off at their studies and parents may blame themselves for not spending enough to provide the best study resources.
But is getting into a high-achieving school a sure ticket for better career prospects, and conversely does entry into a lower-ranking school mean failure? The “big fish in little pond” theory gives us a clue that being a mediocre player in an elite surrounding is no better than being a top player in a less competitive environment.
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Many studies have affirmed the validity of the “big fish in little pond” effect. In the context of schooling, the theory says that a high achiever in an ordinary school is more likely to pursue higher education – and fare better in their future career – than an equally able student who is just run-of-the-mill in a higher-performing school. The explanation behind this is that a big fish (an extraordinary student) in a little pond (a low-ranking school) feels more confident in their academic performance than a similar student in a high-ability school.
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A study published in the November 2018 issue of Comparative Education Review further validates the correlation between highly competitive programmes and students’ negative self-concept.
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