Hong Kong teachers, school administrators responsible for ensuring materials ‘correct, impartial’; education minister pledges oversight
- Schools have received a new set of guidelines on classroom content, with education minister Kevin Yeung promising ‘regular inspections’ of curriculums
- One secondary school principal says the emphasis placed on the guidelines and the sensitivity surrounding certain subjects is likely to make some teachers ‘feel worried and more anxious’
Hong Kong teachers can be held accountable for problematic and biased teaching materials, while school administrators are responsible for monitoring resources and content selected by educators under new guidelines issued by authorities.
Yeung also revealed that of the 269 protest-related complaints received against educators between June of 2019 and December of last year, 149 were suspected or confirmed to have involved wrongdoing, and 107 teachers had already received penalty.
Many of the complaints against teachers involved insults or inappropriate remarks made on social media or during lessons, Yeung said. Two teachers had been stripped of their lifetime registration over lesson content that was deemed problematic. One was a primary school teacher who drafted a worksheet that touched on Hong Kong independence, and the other taught pupils a factually distorted history of the first opium war between Britain and China.
“Officials - through regular inspections and curriculum development visits - would also look into schools’ syllabuses, as well as whether the [self-regulating] system is working.”