What I believe is the underlying problem in this situation is the fact that government is not consistent with education policies. There are been quite a few changes, especially in the local school system, which is subsidized by the government. The government has stated on their website that their vision is to provide quality school education for our students, to develop their potential to the full and to prepare them for the challenges in life. The most current change is to be enacted in the school term of September 2009, whereby the new 3+4+4 system is introduced. This rapid change of education policies could possibly lead to the students not adapting to the changes in the teaching environment, and therefore ultimately affect their school performance. This 3+4+4 program not only changes the syllabus of what they are being taught, but also the way they are being assessed, which may differ from what they have previously been taught.
Most students in Hong Kong have at least achieved one form of Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills (BICS), which are skills used in social situation and human interaction in everyday life. However, many have not developed further to CALPS (Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency), which is more academic, in terms of needing it for reading, writing, speaking and listening, and is said to be essential to all, and the aim is for students to achieved CALPS, which has been said to be essential for all university applications, and therefore this will affect the student’s future school life but this is further damaged by the development and technological advances.
Not only are the students directly affected by changes in the government policies, but the teachers are also hugely affected. The way they teach and what they teach is now becoming more and stricter, and demands for higher levels in the teacher’s education means that a lot of pressure is put on their backs.
Schools in general have been suffering from the labeling effect, which is now not used by the EDB (education bureau). Previously, schools have either been labeled CMI (Chinese medium schools) or EMI (English medium schools). Despite this labeling effect, the levels of language have not been improving. More and more teenagers begin to use chat rooms, msn and texting short messages as an alternative to communicate with other people. This had led to what has been absorbed into the local culture. Their use of short forms of terms without vowels, or incorrect grammar, and scientists believe that in the long term, if this is consistently done, it will ultimately affect their lives later on.
For this problem, we came up with a few possible solutions that the government should consider, so that the education system could be approved. Firstly, I believe that the development of CALPS is very important, and therefore the government should stick to this decision, and ultimately re assess what could have been done better. This links onto the following point, as students often do not have the time to study “extra”, and there are very limited people that a student could possibly practice with, and therefore, little or no improvements are made. This is also related to a more personal note, as a human, they will become less confident and have lower self esteem, which will generally have a huge impact on their future, and will shape who they are.
The pressures on students are high, as not only are they competing against each other for university places, but they are also up against people from China who now can afford to send their children to whichever educational path they wish. As a result many future graduates will not have the requirements to certain degrees. The government should also pledge to keep their most “suitable” policy to a long period of time, eg 10 years, so that they can evaluate with results and view from 10 different year groups of people from different schools.
We also have a list of what we believe are possible solutions to our identified problem:
- The government should restrict parent’s choices to choose different paths within a different system. This will ensure that all students will receive CALPS in at least one language
- The government must test their chosen system for a long period of time (at least 10 years) to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses (so that they can improve in the future)
- Allow parents to choose their desired pathway before Form 1, taking into account that there will be a formal language competency test for all students
- The government should have guidelines, but it up to the school to decide what is best for their students
- Consider education schemes of neighboring countries that have similar demographics e.g. Singapore, Malaysia
- Continue with the current system
Another important stakeholder in this situation would be the parents, who generally want what is best for their child. Many will push their children into the international school system, as this is opens up a lot more possibilities for their child, but financially this may be a huge problem for many, and therefore this creates more pressure for the parents to push their children into prestigious, wealthy or well known local schools that produce students with good grades
We believe that the government would have to come up with a solution which is economically feasible; the government will have to work within a set budget, that the changes must be gradual to ensure that the schools are capable of improving within the time limit, and to also let the students have a voice in what they are being taught. The lack of self confidence and self esteem cannot be fought unless the students step up to it, and the endurance of going through the process and improving their CALPS will generally led to an easier life in a bilingual/trilingual, which is still popular in society today.
