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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? (1)




Introduction



Why do I focus on the medium of instruction of Hong Kong public secondary education?

1.Why medium of instruction?
Language in education is always a mirror of the local language situation. "Vetter (2003) declares that hegemonic power can aim at directly influencing diglossic and polyglossic situations by means of which languages serve media of instruction in education."(Hu, 2007) Especially in Hong Kong secondary education, the existence of both English and Chinese as mediums of instruction implies the language legacy of British colonialism and the complex local condition. 

2.Why secondary education?
Secondary school is one of the most important stage for students' intellectual cultivation and social cognition.Therefore,the choice of instruction language is significant on their future development. t As secondary education is also partly or entirely(after 2008, free but not compulsory) of the free compulsory education, it is an interesting object to study the larger political environment's influence (eg. 1997 Return) on local education.What's more, in secondary education there exists two types of medium of instruction, while in tertiary level English is usually the only one and in elementary level Chinese(Cantonese) is more prevalent.

3.Why public?
All the government regulations of medium of instruction are only effective on public secondary schools, which includes government secondary schools and aided secondary schools ( subdivides into Secondary school under the Direct Subsidy Scheme, Caput secondary school).Private secondary schools and international schools have the freedom to choose their medium of instruction.

4.Why EMI and CMI?
Even though "EMI schools" (英文中学/英中/EMI学校/English as Medium of Instruction School) and "CMI schools"(中文中学/中中/CMI学校/Chinese as Medium of Instruction School) are  no longer the dichotomy of public secondary schools after the Fine-tuning of Medium of Instruction in 2010, local people still use such terms to differentiate secondary schools.


Brief History


Timeline: 1843—1950 —1980 —1986 —1997 —2010

After the cession of Hong Kong Island to Great Britain in 1843, English became the only official language in Hong Kong until co-official Language Policy in 1974.Starting from 1950s, English secondary schools gained popularity and by 1980s, they dominated the secondary education and the number significantly exceeded that of Chinese schools.English schools were deemed as the representation of elite education. In 1986, the Hong Kong government tried to encourage "Mother Tongue Education", which promoted Chinese education, but failed. It was partly because the social environment was still Pro-English and partly due to the fact that most government schools stayed English schools themselves. After the transfer of sovereignty in 1997,the Education Bureau published Medium of Instruction Guidance for Secondary Schools.It limits the individual school's freedom to choose its medium of instruction and requires the schools to meet certain requirements before approved to be English schools.The categorization of EMI and CMI schools thus formed.It eventually reduced the number of EMI schools to 112 (or 114, in debate), around 2% of all Hong Kong secondary schools. In 2010, the Education Bureau implemented the Fine-tuning of MOI,allowing the existence of English classes in an individual school.(Please refer to Education Bureau Circular No.6/2009)Thus the official dichotomy of EMI and CMI schools in public secondary schools became history.


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