EDUCATIONAL FACILITIES
Education
Twenty per cent of the refugees in Hong Kong are under five, 17 per cent are aged six to 15. Education is therefore vitally important.
We recognised a genuine and concerted effort to improve the standard of education provided to refugee children. One of our members, who has been working in a closed camp for three years, spoke of major progress in the past year. We were impressed by the UNHCR's work on education, particularly in boosting the teaching of English and improving coordination between the various agencies.
We saw a great deal of good work being done by extremely dedicated teachers. We also recognised that the two older schools in the open camps do provide the children with a sense of stability, and the newer schools in the closed camps are obviously still establishing themselves.
At the same time, we were appalled by the lack of facilities in many of the camp schools, and the standard of teaching clearly ranges from good to bad.
The legal position regarding education for refugee children surprised us. The Immigration Ordinance allows an Immigration Officer to impose a condition on any refugee that he or she shall not become a student at a school, university or other educational institution.
condition is imposed on refugees in open camps (see Appendix C), and in the case of refugees in closed camps it is presumably covered by the blanket provision that restricts the refugee to a closed camp (see Appendix D).
This would mean that refugee children are denied education, but in fact, of course, there are schools in the camps which the children do attend. What the law states and what actually happens are two different things.
Unlike the rest of Hong Kong, refugee children are not required by law to attend school. Officials said that they could not force the refugees to do something that they do not want to do, but bearing in mind that they are already keeping the refugees in closed camps that is clearly illogical.
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