6
Teaching by mother tongue
Following is a question by the Hon Ip Kwok-him and a reply by the Secretary for Education and Manpower, Mr Joseph Wong, in the Legislative Council today (Wednesday):
Question:
According to the findings of the research conducted by the Education Department, it is more appropriate forabout 70% of Form One students to receive education their mother-tongue, but there are only less than 20% of all the secondary schools in the territory) which have adopted mother-tongue as the medium of teaching. In this connection, will the Government inform this Council:
(a) whether it has promoted the importance of teaching by mother-tongue to parents of secondary school students; if so, what are the details, and what achievement it has made in this regard; and
(b) what plans does the Government have to make more schools accept and
adopt teaching by mother-tongue?
Reply:
Mr President,
(a) The Government's policy is to encourage secondary schools to adopt Chinese as the medium of instruction, to allow individual schools to exercise discretion in the choice of their medium of instruction where their students may learn effectively in either Chinese or English, and to strongly discourage the use of mixed-code in schools. This policy is based on the following considerations:
(i) that teaching and learning are generally more effective through the mother
tongue; and
(ii) that while students can learn more effectively in the mother tongue, those who have the ability to learn effectively in English should be given the opportunity to do so if they wish.