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schools have adopted English as their putative language of instruction,
reflecting the marked preference of the majority of parents, despite
the learning difficulties experienced by some pupils when faced with
the abrupt change from vernacular primary education to English-
medium secondary education.
These difficulties are being exacerbated
now that all children (instead of just the most able or affluent)
are progressing to secondary education.
2.17
The present official policy for secondary education is that
the medium of instruction should not be rigidly determined by category
of school, and individual schools are accordingly free to use
whichever medium of instruction they consider their pupils can cope
with; moreover, they may use Chinese and English for different
subjects and at different class levels if they think this approach
is more suitable for their pupils and accords with parental wishes.
To facilitate this, both the Hong Kong Certificate of Education and
the Higher Level examinations are now bilingual. In theory, this would eventually render meaningless (in respect of language) the
terms 'Anglo-Chinese' and 'Chinese Middle' since a continuous spectrum
of schools between the two language extremes would develop.
practice, however, few Anglo-Chinese schools have introduced Chinese
as the medium of instruction, even for individual subjects: this
is mainly for organisational reasons (such as problems of staff continuity or the lack of good Chinese textbooks in some subjects)
- in particular, the and because of strong traditional ties
preparation of pupils by means of two-year sixth-form courses for English-medium tertiary education. The strongest factor militating against change, however, is undoubtedly the marked parental preference for English, reflecting the market value of English both for employment
In