Closing Hong Kong schools with low enrolment will hurt special education kids: parents

A young boy works on his Chinese homework.

Fifteen Hong Kong primary schools are facing closure due to low enrolment numbers.

Photo: Getty Images The rising number of schools facing closure due to insufficient enrolment has raised concerns over the impact on students with special educational needs (SEN), with parents saying such at-risk institutions provided better care and instruction for their children than those whose survival is secure.

Marcia Ng Mun-chi, co-founder and executive director of the Hong Kong Association for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), recently raised concerns following the Education Bureau’s announcement last month that 15 public primary schools were at risk of closure.

These schools will not be allowed to operate subsidised Primary One classes in the coming academic year due to insufficient enrolment, with authorities saying the figure was the highest in recent years Ng said most of the schools facing closure had been focused on – or were good at – taking care of SEN students and parents preferred them as they had seen their children struggling in mainstream schools, particularly elite ones.

Most of these parents had transferred their children to schools that offered lower teacher-to-student ratios and excelled at SEN education, she added.

Ng conceded that some schools had positioned themselves as SEN-focused institutions after finding themselves at risk of closing.

But they gradually became good at special needs education after a few years. “The strength of these schools is that they offer small class sizes, which SEN students need the most,” she said.

Despite the Education Bureau earlier saying that 90 per cent of schools had implemented small classes with 25 students, Ng said SEN pupils needed class sizes to be even smaller – 20 students or less – which the schools with low enrolment had been offering. “We parents have been looking for these schools, as teachers can offer more attention to SEN children,” she said.

Fresh Fish Traders’ School in Tai Kok Tsui says it prioritises supporting children with special educational needs by allocating resources to them.

Photo: Jelly Tse Ng noted that even if mainstream schools adopted smaller classes, many were exam-oriented, prioritising academic performance over other areas of development.

She said the usual way most mainstream schools took care of SEN students who struggled academically was to put them in after-school classes, which only perpetuated an emphasis

原文链接: 南华早报