Hong Kong sets up inspection team to tackle illegal tutorial centre operations
Secretary for Education Christine Choi vows zero tolerance on schools misusing third-party collaboration to offer unapproved courses
An inspection task force will be established in Hong Kong to crack down on unauthorised collaboration between schools and tutorial centres, the education minister has said, following accusations that a Shenzhen-based centre offered classes for the city’s university entrance exams without approval.
Secretary for Education Christine Choi Yuk-lin said on Monday that she expected the task force responsible for random inspections to improve quality control and boost parents’ confidence.
“Borrowing a ‘shell’ to run a school [under the guise of third-party collaboration to offer classes] is unacceptable, and we have zero tolerance for it,” Choi said.
Her comments came as the Education Bureau asked a direct subsidy scheme school, GT (Ellen Yeung) College in Tseung Kwan O, to submit a report on its alleged partnership with a school in Guangdong to offer Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education (DSE) curriculum for the mainland school’s students.
The mainland school, Ardingly College Zhongshan, reportedly publicised the partnership via its WeChat social media account in May, claiming it would start the DSE course from the September semester.
“The bureau is very concerned about the incident. Upon learning [this], the bureau immediately contacted the relevant school for clarification and asked the school to submit a report,” a spokesman for the bureau said.