Ease homework load on Hong Kong children, Finland's top envoy in city says

Hong Kong can learn from Finland's education system by easing the homework burden on students so both they and their parents have less stress in their lives, the Nordic country's top diplomat in the city said.

Jari Sinkari, Finland's consul general in Hong Kong, said he had gained first-hand experience of the workload imposed on children in Hong Kong when his 18-year-old daughter studied at an international school in the city in the last academic year.

"My daughter was here in the last school term and she had a lot of homework," Sinkari said.

"Maybe the one thing I would like to change a little bit would be the education. The Hong Kong system would [apply] less pressure to the school kids. I think it is a little bit stressful not only for the kids but also the families."

The diplomat revealed that the governments of Finland and Hong Kong had been discussing setting up an exchange programme that would send Finnish teachers to Hong Kong and vice versa so that both sides could learn from each other.

There were also plans to establish what Sinkari termed a "sister schools" programme to allow further cultural exchange, but more discussions were needed to determine exactly how the programme would work, he said.

For many years, Finland's education system has been the envy of the world.