Severe lack of support services for children with learning difficulties in Hong Kong’s public schools, report finds

Lawmakers have expressed serious concerns over the lack of school-based educational psychology services in Hong Kong after it emerged that only one in 10 public schools are equipped with the enhanced service despite a spike in the number of pupils with learning difficulties.

The conclusion from the Legislative Council’s Public Accounts Committee was in response to an earlier Audit Commission report, which also exposed the troubling fact that one in three Hong Kong pupils were only identified as having special educational needs (SEN) for the first time last school year at the age of eight or older, raising concerns that they might have missed the best time to be given support.

Delivering the 12-page report on Wednesday, Public Accounts Committee deputy chairman Kenneth Leung outlined multiple shortfalls in the government’s effort to promote integrated education.

According to the report, 42 of the 844 public schools – or five per cent – received fewer visit days by educational psychologists than required in the last school year.

It was also found that only 21 per cent of the 381 schools which applied for the enhanced school-based educational psychology service had succeeded in their applications. The remaining 764 of the 844 public schools – or 91 per cent – were not provided with the enhanced service, even though 10 per cent of these schools each had more than 80 students with SEN.

“[The committee] urges the Education Bureau to step up measures to ensure that schools receive the required number of visit days by the education psychologists [and to] expedite the liaison with the local tertiary institutions to increase the supply of education psychologists to cater for the long-term manpower needs,” the report read.