Source:
https://scmp.com/article/340736/children-bring-life-no-mans-land

Children bring life to no man's land

Few people heading for Shenzhen notice the small tunnel at Lo Wu KCR station next to the exit turnstiles. It is guarded by a policeman and only those with a closed area permit can enter.

For those allowed through, the tunnel opens out into Lo Wu Village in Ta Ku Ling, an almost deserted community where all that greets the visitor is a stray dog. The village was once the home of farmers, but most moved to the city a decade ago. A Government ban on new houses means there is little chance of the land being redeveloped soon.

But the bleak no man's land comes to life at 8am every weekday as students stream across the border from Shenzhen to go to Lo Wu Public School.

They are among more than 1,800 children who cross the Lo Wu or Sha Tau Kok border every morning to attend primary school in Hong Kong. The usual pattern is that these children are born to Hong Kong fathers and mainland mothers, and have recently gained the right of abode in the SAR. But unlike many who move to Hong Kong, their families have decided that they should reside with their mothers in Shenzhen, travelling to Hong Kong for their schooling.

The children attending Lo Wu Public School almost outnumber the locals - there are so many, in fact, that its three classrooms can no longer accommodate them all. The school's solution has been to create two outdoor classrooms in the playground. Plastic sheeting is all that protects them from the elements. Even the principal has been forced out of his office to make way for classrooms.

The majority of the children who cross the border each day study at one of the six primary schools in the Ta Ku Ling area. Schools here were among the first to admit the mainland-born children who have been moving to Hong Kong since the handover.

'Only two to three schools took in these children at the beginning. Now there are more than 20 of them in the SAR's northern districts. Given the huge demand, I believe the number will keep increasing,' said Chan Yip-keung, principal of Lo Wu Public School.

It is not unusual to see teachers taking a morning roll call of their students at Lo Wu station. Some file on to a nearby bus driven by Yiu Kam-sang. He is not only the bus driver, but also the headmaster of a nearby school, Sam Wo Public School. Lack of manpower at his primary school has meant that he has had to take on the extra duty of transporting more than 200 pupils from the border to the school.

Although Sam Wo Public School has enough classrooms to accommodate its students, there are as many as 45 children in each class.

Schools that admit new immigrant children usually receive government subsidies of $2,750 per child for the extra support the students need. But that is not the case for the Ta Ku Ling schools, because the children do not live in Hong Kong. But the six schools in the area are the focus of efforts to ease the transition of mainland-born children into the Hong Kong education system. Next week their principals will join forces with teacher educators and social workers to hold a home-school co-operation workshop in Shenzhen, giving advice to parents about Hong Kong education.

The event is part of a Quality Education Fund supporting teachers of newly arrived children from the mainland that the School of Foundations in Education (SFE) at the Hong Kong Institute of Education has been conducting since last August. SFE was the only organisation that provides training for such teachers, said Dr Selina Chan Wai-mun, senior curriculum developer of SFE.

'We found that about one-third of the 150 mainlanders coming to Hong Kong on a one-way permit every day are children. So there could be a big problem with teachers not understanding how these students differ from their Hong Kong counterparts in terms of their education background,' she said.

Last year, the training given to six primary schools in the New Territories included a two-day visit to schools in Guangdong. A similar programme will be offered again later this month.

Volunteer teachers from the English Schools Foundation (ESF) have also been helping children in these schools. Since November, volunteers have been spending their Saturdays teaching English at Sam Wo, Lo Wu and Wah Shan public schools. Students are encouraged to speak English in various activities, from sports and drama to origami.

'I think these schools are very clever in how they share their resources and work together to organise activities for their students,' said Graham Young, the ESF organiser of the project.

Many private schools have been set up on the mainland to target these children, but the $3,000 monthly fees are usually too expensive for couples where only the husband works in Hong Kong. For them, the Ta Ku Ling schools are a more viable option for them.

Many of these children have also tasted Hong Kong life beyond this no man's land, living with their fathers and attending schools in urban areas. But the stresses of such arrangments have driven them back to their mothers in Shenzhen.

'We had a student who used to live with his paternal family in Hong Kong to attend a primary school in Ma On Shan. His academic performance was declining rapidly because his relatives did not know how to take care of him,' said Chow Kwok-leung, principal of Wah Shan Public School. The child has been making better progress in his studies after returning to live with his mother and gaining a place in the Wah Shan school.

Unlike schools elsewhere in Hong Kong, these mainland-born children, who make up the vast majority of pupils in the schools, experience no discrimination.

Despite poor conditions and limited resources in the village schools, the students still feel that it is worth crossing the border to take advantage of free Hong Kong education.

The mainland students also prefer the schools in Ta Ku Ling to their Shenzhen schools because of the friendly learning environment provided by the village school community.

The students are seen as hardworking and well-mannered. Polly Kong Kwai-po, who used to teach in a primary school in Yuen Long and is now an English teacher at Sam Wo Public School, says Shenzhen children are much better behaved than Hong Kong-born children.

'I think it has all to do with China's one-child policy and the fact that most of the mothers in Shenzhen are not working, which makes it possible for them to devote more time and energy to parenting,' she said.