A teacher instructs her students in an online class at the Baptist Rainbow Primary School on the first school day of the academic year in Hong Kong on Sept 1, 2020. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

HONG KONG – Hong Kong’s school year started Tuesday but with on-site classes still a month away; compulsory e-learning seems to be fueling worries about the quality of education imparted as a digital divide persists in the city.

More than 70 percent of Hong Kong teachers polled said they are worried about e-teaching, citing reasons such as lack of software and inconvenience in a home setting, according to a survey released Monday by the Hong Kong Federation of Education Workers.

A total of 552 respondents, mostly from primary and secondary schools, were polled and they think a major obstacle is a lack of supporting hardware.

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Tang Fei, vice-chairman of the federation, believes that quite a number of students from disadvantaged families do not have the right equipment for distance learning such as a personal computer with camera.

Tang, who is also principal of Heung To Secondary School in Tseung Kwan O, told China Daily that his school has tailored three timetables to suit online classes, half-day schooling and full-day classes, respectively, in case the coronavirus outbreak induces future policy changes.

According to an e-learning timetable of a local secondary school shared with China Daily, eight 40-minute classes will be held in a day. A parent of a secondary student said that in her son’s school, half-day classes have been organized into six 35-minute e-lessons. Parents too agreed that it is difficult to keep up without adequate hardware and a stable WiFi connection.

With on-site classes now scheduled to start in phases only on Sept 23 as per Education Bureau guidelines released Monday, disadvantaged families on the wrong side of the digital divide will continue to be hit hardest

For Hong Kong’s disadvantaged minority groups, the situation may be grimmer. The e-learning mode is neither suitable for nor achievable by underprivileged non-Chinese speaking families, most of whom do not even have access to internet, said Manoj Dhar, co-founder and chief executive officer of Integrated Brilliant Education, a Hong Kong-based charity that offers educational support focused on that cohort. 

Dhar’s organization is operating two Education Bureau (EDB)-registered tutorial centers to support those children and even their parents in accessing different schools’ online resources.

With on-site classes now scheduled to start in phases only on Sept 23 as per EDB guidelines released Monday, disadvantaged families on the wrong side of the digital divide will continue to be hit hardest.

As the new school year opens, bullying is also weighing heavily on the minds of educators, with an uptick in teenage bullying reported over the summer months.

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Three girls aged between 13 and 14 and an 18-year-old man were arrested on Saturday, after one of them was filmed slapping a 13-year-old girl in school uniform at a playground in Aberdeen on Thursday. The video, which has since gone viral, shows five other boys cheering the perpetrator on. The latest incident comes on the heels of similar arrests over summer school holidays.

Tang said bullying has always been a problem in Hong Kong but the trauma of victims is now prolonged by malicious filming of their humiliation and subsequent social media dissemination.

Schools should have a zero tolerance policy toward bullying, he said, adding that it is imperative to have such videos circulating online wiped out after police have concluded their investigation.

Contact the writer at jefferygu@chinadailyhk.com