Opinion | Mixed messages on Hong Kong schools, mental health must stop

We need all the good news we can get, so let me start by highlighting the Post’s report on early pupil withdrawals from Hong Kong’s elite secondary schools. It found that numbers have dropped significantly since the peak of the emigration wave, with some schools having exit rates even lower than before the wave began.

Then there is the encouraging finding that four Primary One and seven Form One classes have been added to those approved after the government’s headcount exercise at the start of the school year. We opened the school year with 58 Primary One classes slashed. The readjustment of the number of classes appears to have been thanks to the government’s Top Talent Pass Scheme, which, according to the Immigration Department, has brought in almost 19,000 children.

It’s not just international schools that are seeing more enrolments as a result of an influx of people moving to the city for work and bringing along their families. A survey conducted by the Hong Kong Federation of Education Workers found that more than 75 per cent of professionals recruited from outside Hong Kong want their children to study in the city’s primary and secondary schools. More are choosing government-funded institutions over private ones.

Shutting down a class and reopening another one causes disruptions to school operators, takes away precious resources that could be better used on focusing on teaching children and could ultimately damage our children’s learning. The government wasted a golden opportunity to fully consider and implement smaller class sizes where educators can better cater to individual learning needs.