Equal Opportunities Commission calls for increased government aid to help Hong Kong’s ethnic minority students learn Chinese more effectively
- Commission asks for more funding to develop a special curriculum for ethnic minority students and training of teachers
- It says inadequate government measures have deprived ethnic minority members of a chance get better education and job opportunities
Hong Kong’s anti-discrimination watchdog has called for more government funding to develop a special curriculum for ethnic minority students and to train teachers in helping non-Chinese-speaking students learn the language more effectively.
The Equal Opportunities Commission said the inadequacies in the current government measures, which have prevailed for years, had deprived many members of the ethnic minority community of better education and job opportunities, preventing their upward social mobility.
The commission’s calls came as it released its latest report on education for ethnic minorities, which looked at the government’s efforts in the area since 2011.
While the government had introduced some support measures, the commission said “uncertainties and inadequacies” remained in the policies and their implementation, pointing to a lack of systematic training of teachers.
“Many schools just ask the Chinese teacher to teach the language to ethnic minority students. But teaching Chinese as a second language is a totally different thing. A native Chinese teacher may not understand what the non-Chinese-speaking students need,” senior equal opportunities officer Raymond Ho Wing-keung said.
