Travellers line up for Covid-19 PCR tests at Shenzhen Bay Port in Hong Kong. Photo: Dickson Lee
Source:
https://scmp.com/news/hong-kong/education/article/3190305/special-arrangements-hong-kong-students-enter-mainland Education
Special arrangements for Hong Kong students to enter mainland China should be permanent, lawmaker says
- In spite of special arrangement students still struggle to cross border in time to start school
- Some worry that they will not be able to come back after Education Bureau urges students not to visit city if possible
In spite of the special arrangements for students to cross the border to mainland China they still face challenges. Photo: SCMP
A new special quota assisting Hong Kong students to study in mainland China should be made permanent, a lawmaker has suggested, as the government strives to boost the youth’s understanding of the Greater Bay Area and visits have become more frequent.
Lawmaker Kitson Yang Wing-kit told the Post that some students studying in the mainland worried that it would be hard for them to return to the city during winter holidays, after the Education Bureau said the special arrangements for them to cross the border recently would not be permanent.
“They even imagined they could not go back to Hong Kong in one or two years’ time under stringent Covid-19 travel restrictions,” he said on Friday, as the bureau had urged students not to go back to Hong Kong if possible after arriving on the mainland.
Earlier this week, the bureau announced that Guangdong authorities would include Hong Kong students going to Shenzhen or Zhuhai in a scheme launched last month that allowed people only with special needs to apply for “compassionate quotas”.
Students could apply online on or before Friday for the special arrangements to cross and attend mainland schools after the summer holiday, instead of having to compete for the 2,000 quota slots drawn daily through a lottery system.
An Education Bureau spokeswoman said as of 5pm on Friday, 855 students had signed up for the special quota and a total of 613 applications had been approved. They had earlier urged students to file an online application on Friday.
According to the bureau, Cathay Pacific and Hong Kong Airlines have added seven mainland-bound flights as part of the special arrangement, with destinations including Beijing, Wuhan, Nanjing and Hangzhou.
Yang suggested the mainland authorities should consider permanently including these students as one of the categories for the compassionate quotas, instead of on a temporary basis.
“As the government wants to foster the students’ understanding of the Greater Bay Area, while secondary and university students also have to visit the mainland at least once or attend exchange programmes respectively, the relevant policies should be aligned,” he said.
The Greater Bay Area is a central government scheme to link Hong Kong, Macau and nine cities in Guangdong into an integrated economic and business hub.
Yang added that because of the short notice of the new scheme, some students almost failed to get their polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test results as required.
He said it was particularly difficult when students were told on Thursday to set off the next day while the typhoon warning signal No 8 was not taken down until later that morning and it took a whole day for the PCR test results to be made available.
He eventually managed to help three students who will leave on Friday evening to get their PCR test results on time from a private clinic, urging the bureau to give a longer notice period.
A first-year student at Jinan University is rushing to get her polymerase chain reaction test results in time to cross the border into mainland China. Photo: Shutterstock
Nineteen-year-old university first-year student Chen Kin-lam was one of those who had to rush to do a test on Friday morning before her long-awaited departure for Jinan University in Guangzhou on the same day.
No one notified Chen that she was offered a compassionate quota slot for Friday. She only learned from her friends that the results were updated on an online system, leaving her with very little time for the PCR test.
“It is almost impossible to find clinics that provide PCR tests and issue the result on the same day. I cannot lose the quota, I do not know how long it will take for me to be offered another one,” Chen said.
The computer science student had been trying to get permission to cross the border through the Shenzhen Health Station Room Online Reservation System since early August but was out of luck.
“Everyone shares the same probability of being drawn, but not everyone shares the same urgency to go back. Applicants should be grouped and drawn according to their priorities for fairness,” she said.
Chen also tried to buy cross-border bus tickets but was not even able to reach the purchase page. Chen urged the bus operator to regulate scalpers by introducing a Captcha test in the ticketing system.