More than 47,000 parents accuse Education Bureau of “not being sincere” in solving problems over citywide exam for pupils
NAOMI NG AND LAI YING-KIT
PUBLISHED : Wednesday, 16 December, 2015, 12:57pm
UPDATED : Wednesday, 16 December, 2015, 1:07pm
The TSA exams assess pupils’ abilities in Chinese, English and maths. Photo: Edmond So
A group of parents have placed a full-page advertisement in a newspaper condemning the education minister for causing a rift between parents and schools over a controversial citywide assessment for pupils.
The open letter, placed in the front section of Apple Daily today, said the Education Bureau was not sincere in solving the root problem of the Territory-wide System Assessment (TSA).
The bureau issued a notice to all schools last Friday, calling for them to stop drillings and handing out extra class exercises.
“That is only shifting the blame to schools and destroying the trust between parents and schools,” a representative of an online campaign supported by 47,000 parents wrote.
Two primary school principal associations said the authority’s notice to schools was a top-down gesture that ignored the professionalism of school heads and teachers.
Raymond Lai Tsz-man, chairman of the Subsidised Primary School Council, said the suggestions in the bureau’s letter were shocking as education officials had not mentioned them during a committee meeting last Thursday.
Representatives of the two groups will meet education officials today to discuss the notice and TSA related matters.
The two groups renewed calls for suspending TSA for Primary Three next June, in order to give more time for the committee to conduct an in-depth study on the way forward for the tests.
The assessments were introduced in 2004 to track Primary Three, Primary Six and Form Three pupils’ development in their basic knowledge of Chinese, English and mathematics.
But some school principals have complained that the bureau pressured them to raise their exam scores, leading to drilling and excessive homework.
TAKE THE EXAM: Can you answer this Hong Kong Primary Three maths test?
http://m.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/education-community/article/1891818/hong-kong-parents-condemn-education-minister-over
