Wiser use of charity dollars can give Hong Kong’s poorer students a real shot at a proper education

Philip Yeung says Hong Kong’s education sector doesn’t lack funds, but it does need a vision to channel the money effectively to address the gaping problem in our public school system – unequal opportunities

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Students sit for the Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education exam this year at a school in Sham Shui Po. Photo: SCMP Pictures

Published: 12:16pm, 24 Nov 2015Updated: 12:16pm, 24 Nov 2015

Bill Gates is right when he says that, “Giving money away is easy. Giving money away effectively is not”. In Hong Kong, educational philanthropy is blooming; every tycoon worth the epithet has an education foundation to his name. Peter Woo Kwong-ching of Wharf (Holdings), for instance, is pumping up to HK$300 million via his Project WeCan into 50 at-risk schools over six years, backed by 1,250 volunteers and the financial muscle of other civic-minded corporations. And yet, for all the philanthropy and project diversity, the collective effort has yet to achieve a singularity of purpose: saving the public school system from itself.

READ MORE: Education gap threatens poor Hong Kong children

The plurality of agencies catering to needy students, from the government’s own richly endowed Quality Education Fund to the Jockey Club’s education trust, ensures there is enough money to go around. But without a clear vision, many agencies remain in the reactive and remedial mode.

The proposed solutions cannot break the curse of public schools: educational inequality. Gutted by the defections of elite colleges into fee-charging Direct Subsidy Scheme schools, the public system has only crumbs for the poor.

Educational do-gooders need a strategic vision for academic intervention, united in purpose with others to fund and run a parallel experiment that can serve as a foil to failed local schools

These days, schools on the bottom rung are left with only one option: ceaselessly drilling their students for the do-or-die public examination that is hopelessly beyond their reach. For the typical poor neighbourhood school, as many as 95 per cent of their students have no chance of getting into a publicly funded university. Yet the exam drills continue, hijacking the teaching and depriving students of personally relevant knowledge.

To be fair, the money doled out delivers visible improvements, from new classroom furniture to yet another “English camp”. These projects look statistically impressive, with tallies of students helped and schools subsidised. But lasting impact is absent: they don’t change learning and they most certainly don’t change lives.

The old philosophy of giving must give way to new, transformative thinking. In propping up a status quo, these philanthropic interventions merely nibble at the edges. What this sick system needs is a heart transplant, not more Band-Aids.

First graders at an elementary school in Memphis, Tennessee, write and draw during a break. Programmes like Teach for America can serve as a model of how students from neighbourhood schools can be better served. Photo: The New York Times

In their scramble for solutions, foundation managers turn to universities for project partners, on a simple-minded faith that academics are reliable purveyors of innovative quality. The truth is that, unless they have a passion for reform, some are part of the problem rather than the solution. Salvation is likely to come from educators who feel disgusted enough with the system to want to disrupt it.