Opinion | It’s good to have teacher conduct standards in Hong Kong but education is everyone’s concern
- It is too easy to project fears onto the education policy and scapegoat teachers for problems we are partly responsible for
- The post-2019 reconstruction of values is more than just about national security; good education is everybody’s responsibility
In Australia, due to the declining student performance in international standardised tests, politicians became anxious over “teacher quality”. So the federal government has introduced a suite of reform initiatives over the past decade, including the development of Australian Professional Standards for Teachers in February 2011. But the policy has bred new challenges.
Australian teachers need to grapple with more red tape and scrutiny than before. They feel that their work is becoming more tightly controlled, and their autonomy to innovate pedagogy is diminishing. The achievement gap between rich and poor children is widening. This is the sad reality in many state schools in Australia.
To be fair, we can’t jump to the conclusion that the new policy in Hong Kong will lead to outcomes similar to what has been seen in other jurisdictions. Most requirements spelled out in the new guidelines are quite sensible and I believe most Hong Kong teachers abide by them. That a teacher is intentionally teaching wrong things to students is beyond the pale.