Special needs schools being discriminated against because they are not allowed to join NET scheme, court hears

The government is discriminating against an intellectually disabled student by refusing his school's application to join the Native-speaking English Teacher (NET) scheme, the High Court heard yesterday.

At a judicial review hearing, Philip Dykes SC, representing teenage student Law Chi-yuen, said that the discrimination arose because the NET scheme was open to schools for students with physical - but not intellectual - disabilities. Law is a secondary one student at HHCKLA Buddhist Po Kwong School in Fanling, which provides special education to pupils with mild intellectual disabilities.

The application asks the court to find that policy illegal and discriminatory, because it provides inferior treatment to students with intellectual, compared to physical, disabilities. Mainstream schools are also entitled to join the NET scheme, the court heard.

Dykes said that intellectually disabled students had to go to mainstream school if they wished to have a native speaker to teach them English.

"You are at a [special] school with the benefits of having the support for special needs," he said. "If you go to the mainstream school, you have to forgo that." He added that this also constituted discrimination.

Outside court, the school principal Lee Kai-ming said that there were 41 schools teaching intellectually disabled students in Hong Kong. He added his school had complained to the Equal Opportunities Commission which had failed to resolve the matter.