Opinion | Hong Kong school closure: zero-Covid goal is not worth the damage to children’s learning and long-term economic growth
- With many studies now showing the devastating impact of lost time in the classroom, the government has made a poor decision to shut down schools, especially when reasonable policies can be put in place to minimise risk
But in Hong Kong, the vaccination rate has remained relatively low. Strict border closures have kept case numbers so low that residents who might be wary of getting vaccinated have seen little incentive to overcome their fears. The arrival of Omicron in Hong Kong now looms large because of adult residents’ choices – a price that Hong Kong’s schoolchildren should not be asked to pay.
Hong Kong has more than 300,000 primary students who will be affected by the coming shut-down, many of them severely and permanently.
Primary students are uniquely ill-served by remote schooling, which forces them into a mode of learning deeply out of step with their social, emotional and educational development. While an older student may be able to focus for hours at a time on computer-driven lessons and remote instruction by their teachers, younger students struggle to maintain the attention required for real learning to take place.
Anyone with a young child in home-schooling over the past year has witnessed the uphill battle of teachers who struggle to keep primary-age students focused and on track with their assignments. Some children could not focus at all, easily tempted by nearby computer games that can be played during lessons.
