Forcing an early summer school break on our children is ruthless and reckless

After repeated school closures, the latest audacity to move a season without consultation or consideration feels like war has been declared not so much on Covid-19 as on our children and their future

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Students go to school in Wan Chai on January 10. School closures have a devastating impact on children’s well-being and their lifetime earnings. Photo: Nora Tam

Alice Wu

Alice Wu is a political consultant and a former associate director of the Asia Pacific Media Network at UCLA.

Published: 12:30pm, 27 Feb 2022

Let’s be clear. Schoolchildren around the world have had more than 100 weeks of education disruption. They have lost an estimated over 2 trillion hours of in-person instruction.

School closures have a devastating impact on learning, on social and emotional development and health – and we don’t get to make up for them later, not like how some of our hardest-hit local businesses can now defer their rents. We are talking about lifelong deficits in social and interpersonal skills.

An often-cited report from the World Bank, Unesco and Unicef estimates that this generation of children could lose US$17 trillion in lifetime earnings in present value – a staggering price we are making our younger generation pay.

So when the convenor of the Executive Council devoted an entire opinion piece to the detrimental impact that repeated school closures have on children of all ages and what ignoring the pleas of educators mean for the government, one would reasonably expect that the chief executive would listen to what her top adviser had to say.

I was holding out hope that for saying what many people have been saying about the harms of extended learning disruptions, Bernard Chan would get through to Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor. Are we right to sacrifice the future of younger generations for the sake of accommodating the vaccine sceptics?

Maybe he did get through to Lam; and hence the ingenious idea to have the summer holidays before the Easter break. It’s not technically a school closure. It’s not technically a disruption. Lam just moved summer up by a few months.

Well, school’s out, but it’s definitely not summer! Easter is a moveable feast. It is not a summer break if children are expected to continue with and finish the 2021-2022 school year, which has been extended into August. It’s not a summer break if one has to go back to finish the school year.