This is an endless topic of discussion. I would like to express few words. May be, I would like to move my eyes upwards to get a macro point of view. Due to economic growth of Hong Kong, the education system adopted a lot of change from the past to the present. These changes exert a lot of pressure to all parties of student, teacher and parent. I would like to discuss each entity as below:
1) Student
The kids are the core of this system. Any influences from school, family and environment input to the kids. The root cause must not be the kids, but they are the result of performance reflecting the impact from difference influences. In capability, I cannot see a significant difference in kids between in the past and at the present. May be, I think that the kids at present is smarter than that in the past. Today, there are a lot of distractions/attractions to cause poor result of kids. It is not an excuse as it can be solved by a balance consultation from both teacher/parent to the kids.
2) Teacher
Recall the statement above “what do you expect from a CAT?”. I would like to rewrite as “what do you expect from a teacher?”. I have experience in both as a parent and a secondary school teacher because I did a temporarily job as a three months “supply teacher”(代課老師) at secondary school in the past because the original teacher was sent to government education department for training. I can understand their situation. The major source of teacher is the fresh graduate from university or education institution. The labor market is open which is a supply and demand problem with perfectly competition with private and government sectors. Don’t expect a teacher to be a superman or superwoman. In comparing the teacher from the past to the present, the quality of teacher is basically the same and OK la, or may be have better training at the present. Due to change of education system from one-stop open public examination to internal assessment in school, teacher has to do a lot of document work at the present which cause them fully loaded.
3) Parent
Some teachers complaint that it is difficult to teach a large discrepancy between students born locally and from China immigrant in same class. This is a fact. However, socio-economic problem always exists in education from the past to the present. In the past said 50’s to 60’s, most of parents including mine were fresh immigrants from China. Most of parents have not enough time to take care of their kids, that is same in the past and at the present. To me, I don’t think a big difference in parent behaviour between in the past and at the present. They do very good, but also do worst as well.
4) The education system
I am not an experienced educator. In this point, I take the role of parent or local citizen to criticize the current education system in Hong Kong. I basically feel very uncomfortable with it. When I was a student in the past, I faced only three public examinations in transition among primary school, secondary school and university. Internal examination became not important. We had less pressure and had a lot of fun to enjoy in school. Even you were lazy in school, you could catch up your result by pushing the study one year before public examination because the knowledge was simple.
At present, the public examination in primary school was cancelled and changed to internal assessment. Then, the pressure moves into school internal assessment which causes frustration from kids, teacher and parents. They are busy all the time to do different assessment, etc... I don’t know the difference in achievement between one-stop public examination and internal assessment with several years. Personally, I prefer one-stop public examination. If not OK in public examination, then attempt next year. Just simple!
I always heard a lot of change of education system from government. Why change? The coming big change is that the HKALE will be last administered in 2012 and merged with the existing Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination to form the Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education examination at the end of the new, three-year senior secondary curriculum. CAT, can you explain “Why?”.
In change management, we firstly set the goal of change. Then, implement the change strategy. Lastly, should measure the result with respect to achievement of goal in order to determine whether the change is successful or failure. Both feel personally and heard from different person that performance of student at the present becomes poorer and poorer. Does anyone measure it with respect to change in education system and make adjustment if necessary? If failure, please stop it!
In conclusion, my major uncomfortable is the current education system, but not kids, teacher or parent. I admit that change of education system is appropriate in order to match with rapid economic growth of Hong Kong from the past to the present. But, I personally feel that:
1) the change is too rapid, and
2) the change is too complex
which cause drawbacks to kids, teacher and parent at all. OK! a lot of words. Just express my feeling.
B. regards,
alant
Ref:
1) http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%A6%99%E6%B8%AF%E4%B8%AD%E5%AD%B8%E5%AD%B8%E4%BD%8D%E5%88%86%E9%85%8D%E8%BE%A6%E6%B3%95
2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong_Advanced_Level_Examination |