Letters | Hong Kong has a history of failing students on education reforms
- Shifting the focus to parents instead of the school system reminds of past failures to address class size and inequality
With a falling birth rate and smaller student population, small-class teaching could have been implemented to support those reforms that required smaller classes to succeed. But the government bowed to Treasury pressures, maintained large classes and “killed” schools with insufficient enrolment. Then there was the misguided campaign to have subsidised prestigious schools admit and teach in the same class a mix of high- and low-achievers.
The result was that prestigious schools opted for autonomy by turning into direct subsidy or private schools, thus perpetuating their elitism to teach children of wealthy families only.
A slogan of “learning is not for grades” was also used, but it is a PR disaster to use a slogan in the negative, rather than positively defining what learning is for (perhaps they themselves were not really sure). If the system that makes grades all important is not changed, what can the poor parents and students do but follow the majority?
Rupert Chan, Mid-Levels