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How to Know Hong Kong and Macau

Roberto Ignacio Diaz, Dominic Cheung, Ana Paulina Lee, Authors

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Hong Kong Public Secondary Education Today: CMI?EMI? Or Something New? (2)

Choices for the Students

  Because of the colonial history and the importance of English worldwide today, there is still a preference for English Schools in Hong Kong.English schools are sometimes still deemed "better" among parents and students. Yet, are them free to choose which type of secondary schools as they want? Not quite.
When students graduate from elementary schools, they go through "Secondary School Places Allocation"*. The allocation takes the students'academic achievement,the school district they belong to and their own preference into consideration.
I had the opportunity to talk to a lady at a front office in a Chinese school at North Point, Hong Kong. She states that some students might end up going to the schools not their first choice.So it is hard to say why some students "choose" English schools and some "choose" Chinese schools. 
Therefore, the students' choice of medium of instruction might not be completely voluntary.The uneven distribution of each type of schools in the school district and the general guidance heavily influence the outcome of education. 
After the 1997 Transfer of Sovereignty,Chinese education, which includes Mandarin education, has gained growing attention. For example,seen in the previous timeline and brief history, the General Guidance which was published in 1997 and came into effect in 1998 promoted Chinese teaching and significantly limited the number of EMI schools. Therefore the possibility of students allocated to EMI schools has also diminished.Another example is that Hong Kong Government's promotes of "—Biliterate and trilingual abilities of students".The general direction emphasizes on the student's multilingual ability and importance of their mother tongue, instead of just focusing on their English ability.The larger political background inevitably impacts the educational language policy, thus indirectly affects the allocation and the students' choice of languages.
Also,as secondary education stresses the "trilingual ability" and mandarin becomes compulsory curriculum in 1998, some outside agencies also provide corresponding training. In recent years, there is growing demand for Mandarin training.This is a Mandarin class inside a civic center at North Point.
On one hand, people's perception of languages and their decision to learn one or another might amount to the degree that change the language's overall importance and popularity in the society. On the other hand, the individual choice is driven by the underlying political and social force as well. 
*Yet, even with Secondary School Places Allocation, the schools can also set aside certain number of seats for students who do not go through SSPA but pass the school's admission tests to get into the school.


Selected School Profile Around North Point, Hong Kong

Tung Wah Group of Hospitals
Lee Ching Dea Memorial College (Chinese)


—Cheung Chuk Shan College (English)


—Clementi Secondary School (Chinese)


—Belilios Public School (English)

All four schools above are public schools. www.schooland.hk/ss/ unofficially give group numbers to the secondary schools in Hong Kong, which suggests the source of incoming students.According to their website, the group number for Belilios Public School,Clemenri Secondary School, TWG Lee Dea Memorial College and Cheung Chuk Shan College is respectively 1A, 1B, 2B and 1A. That implies that there is a huge possibility of overlapping origin of students. In addition, if we look at the map,these four schools are relatively close in geography. On my actual visit there, it takes no more than 10 minutes to get to one school from another.Geographically-close schools usually belong to the same district, so they might be in the choices for Secondary School Places Allocation together. This further proves that the students might come from the same elementary school district and have very similar educational background, but which school or what type of school they end up going is affected by the Allocation, other than their personal choices.
I observe students coming out from English school converse in Cantonese. This is interesting because in this case, even though they are fully immersed in English education, English is still not the language they "speak at home" or most comfortable with. The status of English is high in Hong Kong society,and people learn it with a specific purpose other than communication among themselves.English is not a basic language to know in Hong Kong to survive, but it is important.

After all, the public secondary education in Hong Kong aims to maintain the multilingualism in Hong Kong by equipping students with multilingual ability.After 1997, the importance of Chinese language ability is promoted to a new level,while causing some controversies because English education is seemingly inhibited. But that is also a result of the multilingual social condition in the past and the global reality today. "As for the community, the changing medium of instruction in schools means changes in symbols of power, identity and social network for new generations in the community....The HKSAR government creates a more open society and socially inclusive institutions for the new trilingual generation by compulsory education. Their new social network tends to be close to local and national communities, compared to the former elites whose links to colonial power gradually fade out. Additionally, speaking English is important for Hong Kong to identify itself as an international commercial centre. The issue of mother-tongue education reveals that it is complicated to employ the local language together with the internationalized colonial language as the second language. It is a struggle of power between the old and the new symbolic forces as the social conditions and the environment are transformed" (Hu, 2007).Hopefully Hong Kong government will achieve a balance in the pro-English and pro-Chinese debate to serve the best interest of its people and the precious multilingualism in Hong Kong. 





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