Hong Kong principals appeal to city leader John Lee to plug education brain drain as teachers desert classrooms
- Secondary school heads appeal to city leader John Lee for government survey to help find way to stem teacher losses from classrooms
- Head teachers’ group says it is hard to agree with government claim that schools were functioning normally, despite the loss of staff
Hong Kong secondary school principals have warned Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu that classrooms are suffering because of a serious brain drain of staff, and that the situation is worse than has been reported.
The Hong Kong Association of the Heads of Secondary Schools on Tuesday said the organisation found it hard to agree with claims by education authorities that schools were functioning as normal, despite the major loss of teachers.
The association, in a proposal to Lee, said schools had failed to recruit enough trained replacements and warned the situation was more critical than had been reported.
“Either the teaching workload of the vacant posts was shared among serving teachers or had to be taken up by untrained teachers on a contract basis,” the association said.
“This is undesirable, especially for schools in remote areas or taking in students with vast differences in learning abilities.”
The turnover rate among teachers in secondary schools in the last academic year was 7.8 per cent, 3.2 per cent higher than the initial estimate of 4.6 per cent.