Hong Kong faces a growing challenge from an aging population, driven by a longer life expectancy and declining birth rates, thus testing our social fabric and stretching its financial resources. This demographic shift raises the dependency ratio, placing pressure on a shrinking workforce to support a rising number of older adults needing healthcare and social care. Consequently, the next generations must be suitably skilled to meet the changing needs in the workplace and thus become productive taxpayers. In the future, we should tailor our tertiary education and vocational training to reflect the needs of the workplace. Only then can we ensure continued economic vibrancy and social stability.
However, there are significant bottlenecks ahead in the critical transition from schools to tertiary or higher education. This year, 55,489 candidates took the Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education (HKDSE) examination, up 10 percent over last year. In addition, in the May session, 2,628 Hong Kong students took the International Baccalaureate (IB) exams, a nearly 20 percent increase over the past five years.
Typically, Hong Kong’s eight University Grants Committee-funded universities offer a total of about 15,000 first-year degree places, 80 percent of which are allocated through the Joint University Programs Admissions System (JUPAS). The remaining 3,000 places are offered to those with non-JUPAS qualifications, including those taking the IB program. To put this into context, for this academic year (2024-25), 15,808 applicants were offered spots in local universities or a subsidized diploma course through JUPAS, a slight increase from the 15,776 last year. From among the entire HKDSE-exam-candidate cohort, only 16,393 students attained the minimum entrance requirements for the eight public universities, up from 38.4 percent, or 15,629, last year.
Either way, there is an apparent mismatch as regards the supply of young-people resources, which is far outstripping the supply of UGC-funded university places. Besides the UGC-funded universities, there are vocational institutions. But as explained by Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu in April 2024, the negative perceptions associated with vocational education need to be changed. And it won’t be easy, given many tradition-minded parents’ tendency to nudge their children toward medicine or law for these professions’ prestige and money-earning potential.
Not surprisingly, entry into UGC-funded universities is highly competitive. Given that the pursuit of excellence is the bedrock of human progress, there’s nothing undesirable in striving for excellence. Therefore, healthy competition to gain entry into universities provides students with a healthy foretaste of workplace competition.
That said, there should be a realistic chance and an absolute priority for local students to gain admission into universities. Their entrance into a UGC university should naturally be commensurate with their grades. It calls for these universities to increase their intake of local talent.
At this point, whereas the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region is enthusiastically promoting the internationalization of its higher education, it is also prudent to revisit the educational structure of our HKDSE-exam system. The exam is now 14 years old. As George Bernard Shaw opined, “Progress is impossible without change.” But is now an ideal time to upgrade the HKDSE-exam system to implement structural changes that make it more inclusive, welcoming, and adaptable for both local and international students?
The next generations must be suitably skilled to meet the changing needs in the workplace and thus become productive taxpayers. In the future, we should tailor our tertiary education and vocational training to reflect the needs of the workplace. Only then can we ensure continued economic vibrancy and social stability
At this juncture of its evolution, data indicate that the Achilles’ heel of the HKDSE-exam system is the language deliverables. With the Education Bureau (EDB) consistently funding and encouraging trilingualism and biliteracy, and the Chinese and English languages being two core HKDSE-exam subjects, local schools are routinely underdelivering on this aspect. As regards to the English language, only an average of 52.6 percent could cross the threshold at Level 3 between 2015 and 2024. The rate this year was 53.6 percent. In November 2024, the Territory-wide System Assessment, announced by the EDB, highlighted that the English competency of Form Three students had dropped to its lowest level in nearly two decades, in sync with its continued decline over the years. Proficiency in Chinese, English, and math among Primary Three pupils also fell to their worst levels in about 20 years. The fact that Chinese students taking the HKDSE exams dub the Chinese-language test the “paper of death” is common knowledge. That non-Chinese speaking (NCS) students are constantly underserved in their Chinese-language learning efforts is something the EDB is painfully aware of. After the Audit Commission report findings of March 2021, in December 2022, the EDB observed that “the bureau’s report also looked at Chinese-language teaching for pupils from ethnic minority backgrounds and found many schools had failed to provide sufficient support for the subject”.
The EDB must be applauded for its unrelenting efforts to nurture the trilingual abilities of all Hong Kong children. In October 1996, the Standing Committee on Language Education and Research was established to advise the government on language education issues and the use of the Language Fund, and to support government endeavors to enable residents to become biliterate and trilingual. To enhance the teaching of English and increase exposure of students to it, a Native-speaking English Teacher (NET) Scheme has been implemented in public secondary and primary schools since the 1998-99 and 2002-03 school years respectively. Effective in 2014, the EDB implemented a series of enhanced support measures to boost NCS students’ effective learning of the Chinese language and the creation of an inclusive learning environment in schools. The policy is committed to encouraging parents of NCS students to arrange for their children to study in schools with an immersive Chinese-language environment to facilitate their mastery of Chinese. Although the EDB has invested substantial resources in these initiatives, the deliverables from the assigned schools fall short of expectations.
In contrast, if a family’s financial strength permits, and the child is enrolled in the expensive IB curriculum at an IB-providing school, they can learn another language (such as German, French, Spanish, or Japanese) alongside English, albeit at a basic level. Thus, in the IB system, for an NCS child, learning Cantonese or Mandarin is not a do-or-die situation. In contrast, local schools pursuing the HKDSE-exam curriculum make English and Chinese nonnegotiable core subjects. That rigidity, plus the fact that even Hong Kong’s ethnic Chinese children themselves term the Chinese-language exam as the “paper of death”, makes it a challenging proposition. The fact that the number of students taking the IB program in Hong Kong has increased by nearly 20 percent over the past five years indicates that more and more students and parents prefer its flexibility to the HKDSE exam.
While the HKSAR has succeeded in providing 15 years of free schooling for all eligible children since 2017-18, the government’s aspirations to provide quality education and equitable access to the same can be achieved with a much better performance and delivery by the schools.
We must champion the next generations, focusing on their education, and achieve this with positive, progressive, pragmatic and actionable plans with key performance indicators.
The author is co-founder and CEO of Integrated Brilliant Education Ltd, a Hong Kong-registered charity dedicated to providing a holistic educational experience for children.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.
