Management a serious problem in our schools
My critique of the Hong Kong education system is offered on behalf of children who make teaching in this city worthwhile. It is their future that hangs in the balance.
Each year native English-speaking teachers are recruited from abroad in an effort to improve the standard of English in Hong Kong. However, once they arrive here full of energy and enthusiasm they get marginalised by the system. The establishment within a school's English department ignores all of their advice and educational expertise. In spite of all the evidence which suggests that a second language is acquired by interacting in the language, it is insisted that students learn via textbooks and worksheets.
There is clearly no understanding or appreciation of the dynamics of second-language acquisition. For this reason, all local English teachers should be required to take a course in Teaching English as a Second Language. All schools participating in the NET scheme should be required to employ these teachers as the English panel chair (department head).
In Hong Kong, long hours are equated with increased productivity. Teachers are often required to stay at school well into the evening to impress the principal. Very little is accomplished and the teacher may be too tired to be effective the next day. Each year when faced with poor Territory-wide System Assessment results (assessments for Primary Six and Three pupils), schools do not consider changing their teaching methodology. Instead they consider lengthening the school day. Doing dictation for a longer period of time is as ineffectual as doing it at all.
One of the most vexing problems within Hong Kong's education system is management. It is as though the principals have read all the books on how to manage people and have then decided to do the opposite with redundant meetings and the assignment of demeaning tasks to teachers and staff. This creates a malevolent ambience within our schools. The government should consider a job-shadowing programme whereby potential principals are sent abroad to work alongside foreign principals.
How many more teachers have to commit suicide before the Education Bureau addresses the appalling management skills of the people running its schools? This system is seriously ailing and for the sake of the children, those at the top need to find the courage to change.
