Fewer secondary schools using Putonghua to teach Chinese classes in Hong Kong
But Putonghua remains the norm in primary schools
The number of schools teaching classes in Putonghua has dropped slightly – which indicates a trend for more educators to scrap the practice, a cultural group said yesterday.
The drop was mainly recorded in secondary schools,where there are still around 30 per cent using the official mainland language to teach Chinese lessons.
But Putonghua remains the norm in primary schools, which remained unchanged at 73 per cent last year when compared with the previous year.
The third annual report by Cantonese support group, Societas Linguistica Hongkongensis, polled all 964 primary and secondary schools in the city.
“We believe the number of schools using Putonghua will go down in the long run,” said Andrew Chan Lok-hang, convener of the group.
Ip Kin-yuen, lawmaker for the education sector, said it was hard to conclude a decreasing trend for the practice if the drop was only 1 per cent. But he criticised the government for pushing the language policy in a rigid way.