Students at breaking point: Hong Kong announces emergency measures after 22 suicides since the start of the academic year
Twenty-two young people have taken their lives so far this academic year. Is the city’s pressure-cooker education system solely to blame – or is it more complex?
It is a statistic that is as alarming, as it is baffling.
Since the start of the academic year, a spike in the number of students in Hong Kong who have committed suicide has seen 22 young people – one just 11 years old – take their lives. The four most recent cases occurred over just five days.
Compare this to the average of 23 student suicides a year between 2010 and 2014, according to figures from the University of Hong Kong’s Centre for Suicide Research and Prevention, and it is clear why alarm bells are ringing.
Experts in the education, health and youth fields are desperately trying to understand the reasons and arrest the worrying trend.
The Education Bureau announced new measures on Thursday after an emergency meeting with key stakeholders. These included improving student counselling support in schools, holding seminars to help teachers and parents to identify problems earlier, and forming a committee to come up with recommendations on preventative solutions in six months.
While Hong Kong’s high-pressure education system is seen as largely to blame, with too much focus on score-oriented assessments putting pressure on students, experts contend the issue of youth suicide is complex and that the seeds of the problems are being sown much earlier than we realise.
Experts are warning that spending a lot of time in the virtual world and having a lack of family support could be contributing to the problem, as these factors are shaping a generation with weaker resilience against stress and problems.
