The education system - which relegates one in five children to a substratum - was a factor in the torture-killing of 15-year-old Luk Chi-wai, an official acknowledged yesterday.
Deputy Secretary for Education and Manpower Raymond Young Lap-moon accepted the criticisms of a teacher from Luk's former school that the 'outmoded, inflexible' banding system had played a role in his death.
Teacher Pauline Bunce said the band-five schools - which accept primary graduates scoring in the lowest 20 per cent of aptitude tests - fostered a 'negative, anti-establishment student subculture'.
They had become training grounds for criminals and holding pens for the future unemployed, Ms Bunce said.
A teacher from Bishop Hall Memorial Prevocational School in Sau Mau Ping, which produced several of those involved in the torture-killing, had called to support the views she expressed in a letter in yesterday's South China Morning Post.
The victim and one offender had attended Hong Kong Weaving Mills Association Chu Shek Lun Prevocational School in Kowloon Bay.