South Asian students thwarted by lack of Chinese-language skills Local primary students have no problem reading and writing the Chinese characters for common words such as “mushroom”, “pumpkin” or even “universal suffrage”. Not so for Pakistani girl Igra Khan, who is in Form Three. Although she followed her mother to Hong Kong when she was 10 months old, Khan is lagging behind her local peers in Chinese-language skills. She can speak the language fluently owing to her mingling with local children in school, but her reading and writing is weak. The importance of the language in Hong Kong means ethnic minority students like her have a bleak future, with little hope of getting into local universities. A survey carried out by the Equal Opportunities Commission last year showed that students from South Asia, such as Pakistanis and Nepalis, accounted for 3.2 per cent of primary school pupils, but only 1.1 per cent of senior secondary students and 0.59 per cent of tertiary education students. Their under-representation in local higher education has caught the attention of the United Nations Human Rights Committee. At a meeting in March, it urged the Hong Kong government to implement the recommendation of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination to “intensify its efforts to encourage the integration of students of ethnic minorities in public school education” and to report back within one year. More than 10,000 ethnic minority pupils study at mainstream primary and secondary schools, and at schools that cater specifically to them. The 31 “designated” schools offer a much simpler Chinese curriculum than mainstream schools because of students’ diverse Chinese-language levels. Local families often shun these schools, worried that their children will be exposed to negative influences from, for example, perceived behavioural problems of children from ethnic minority families. The large curricular gap, many believe, keeps South Asians at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder. Khan’s 18-year-old sister, who moved to the territory at the age of 10, had so much trouble learning Chinese that she quit school altogether. She now works at a laundry. Read More Yeung, L. (May 06, 2013). South Asian students thwarted by lack of Chinese-language skills. Retrieved from scmp/lifestyle/family-education/article/1231278/lost-words
Posted on: Sat, 31 Aug 2013 06:52:11 +0000
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