Robert Badal

Opinion | Hold all Hong Kong schools to the same English standards, or risk widening the wealth gap

The standard and instruction of English varies widely across Hong Kong schools, an educational disparity that cuts neatly across income classes and reinforces the wealth gap. It’s time to address this and give every child in Asia’s ‘world city’ a chance

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Students participate in English Fun Day at St Paul’s College in Hong Kong in March. Photo: Handout

Robert Badal

Published: 6:30am, 21 Dec 2019Updated: 3:45pm, 21 Dec 2019

Hong Kong students have been ranked third again in Asian IELTS English test scores, a measure of proficiency in the language. But what does this result actually mean?

For starters, those who take the IELTS (International English Language Testing System) test tend to be those planning to further their studies abroad. So, are the test scores representative of the English proficiency of the average Hong Kong student? Absolutely not.

There is no average Hong Kong student because there is no average Hong Kong school. There are international schools and Education Bureau schools. The latter are subdivided – into schools under the subsidised, grant or direct subsidy schemes – and academically ranked in bands from one to three. The system is a confederation of individual schools rather than an organised entity.

In Hong Kong’s market-based system, each school aims to attract the best students, with parents also competing to get their children into the best schools possible. This competitive process transforms school administrators into sales managers. At the top of the food chain are the astoundingly expensive international schools, which exist outside the band-ranking universe.

Yet, rankings are only part of the story. Bottom-ranked schools also share denominators such as having more children from lower-income families or from the mainland. The increasing numbers of mainland children enrolling in Hong Kong schools is part of Hongkongers’ antipathy for mainlanders.

But even bottom-ranked schools need to attract students, so administrators welcome children from the mainland. But they often start off with a poorer command of English, if at all, and lack motivation to read English books, and this forces teachers to dumb down instruction.