To be an education hub, Hong Kong must first do better by its children

Hong Kong has ambitious plans to become an international higher education hub. Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu announced as much in his policy address. We are home to top-ranked universities, and the plan seems on track. But are we really preparing our children for these education ambitions? Are we equipping them to join our top-ranked universities?

Ahead of any findings, however, a council representing subsidised secondary schools has already called for more institutions to be allowed to teach subjects in English to better prepare pupils for higher education. Indeed, we don’t need a study to tell us that, when almost all our post-secondary programmes are conducted in English. When schools are policy-bound to teach in Chinese, we are clearly not preparing our students to be part of the city’s education hub ambitions. And that shows up a huge gap in our policies.