EDUCATION AT THE CROSSROADS
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understand and provide for their needs; there has been tension between the language needs of pupils and the language practices of individual schools; there is disparity of provision in the public sector and a growing inability to reconcile an anxious concern for academic standards with a recognition that different kinds of standard should be evolving for different kinds of pupil. There appears to be a growing feeling that the situation is too complex to be successfully tackled by individual schools.
This prompts several related questions. Should Hong Kong be moving towards a form of comprehensive schooling? Should there be greater diversity within the school system to provide more appropriate forms of education for the less able? Should there be positive discrimination in the provision of staff and resources to favour particular groups of pupils? If there is resistance on the part of some schools to admitting the less able in significant numbers, should the development of an elite private sector be encouraged in order to provide a viable alternative to the public sector for those willing to pay high fees in return for academic standards? Should major initiatives be taken in curriculum development to provide forms of education to which children will respond positively, whatever their level of ability? What contribution is teacher education able to make, given that most existing teachers (and, for that matter, educational administrators, lecturers and inspectors) are themselves products of an academically-oriented system?
Educational Priorities
As a matter either of necessity or of policy priority, major educational developments over the past few decades have tended, as the panel recognised, to be sectorally-based; and from time to time progress on different fronts has been somewhat out of phase. With a nine-year basic school course now established, questions need to be asked about the priorities to be accorded to different aspects of educational development, having regard to the returns from the money and effort invested in different sectors. Should resources be spread evenly (apart from obvious areas such as special education where more generous provision is a necessity) or should priority still be given to strengthening specific sectors at the risk of (or in spite of) continuing imbalance? The view has been taken that present forms of academic education are still strongly favoured because alternative forms are less attractive. Should we make these alternatives more attractive by allocating more resources to their development? Given a choice between senior secondary education and a place in a technical institute, most pupils will opt for the senior secondary place, whatever their academic limitations. Would better technical institutes offering shorter courses, perhaps on a full-time rather than a part-time basis and linked with improved apprenticeship schemes, help pupils and their parents to make a more appropriate choice? Should priority be given to general education or to vocational education at school or post-school level? Is it wise, given the long-term effects of kindergarten education on children's attitudes to learning, that the pre-primary sector should remain totally private, albeit with the qualitative improvements announced in the 1981 White Paper? Is the servicing of the school system appropriate – are the Education Department and the government adequately organised to serve the system they have created and are the schools adequately staffed and organised, with buildings, facilities and resources appropriate to their needs at the present stage of Hong Kong's educational development?
In terms of internal priorities within individual schools, should school authorities in the public sector be given more freedom over the allocation of the resources made available to them?