Teacher asked to repay salary as University of Hong Kong degree not registered for primary school teaching
- Teacher has been asked to repay HK$200,000 in salary as Education Bureau says his degree was not registered under training programme
- Union leader Ip Kin-yuen says HKU may have failed to register the course under primary teacher training qualifications after it started in 2012
A teacher employed at a government-subsidised primary school has been asked to repay HK$200,000 (US$25,800) in salary after authorities found the degree he had earned from the University of Hong Kong did not qualify him for the job.
The teacher, who graduated with a double bachelor’s degree in education and social sciences last year and took up the job in February this year, was told months later that the HKU qualification was not registered under the primary teacher training programme. He was told he was only qualified to take up graduate teaching jobs at secondary schools.
He said previous promotion materials and documents at HKU had claimed that the five-year degree programme would qualify him to be a teacher of liberal studies and humanities-related subjects at the city’s secondary and primary schools.
“I felt HKU was misleading, which kind of lured me into choosing their programme in 2014,” said the teacher, in his 20s, who wanted to remain anonymous.
He said before his employment started in February as an assistant primary school master – a junior graduate-level teaching position – at a subsidised primary school, both he and the school’s principal had called HKU to reconfirm his degree qualification.
