A top adviser to the Hong Kong government has criticised the worsening performance of local students and teachers despite an increase in resources in recent years, urging authorities to set key performance indicators (KPIs) to track the cost-effectiveness of such measures.
But the city’s education minister argued that it was difficult to see the immediate results of allocating more resources towards schools, such as increasing the number of teaching personnel.
Veteran lawmaker Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee, who sits on the Legislative Council’s education panel and is the convenor of the Executive Council, a key decision-making body, said on Friday that the government had poured a lot of resources into education.
The resources had gone towards areas such as raising students’ learning abilities, taking care of pupils of differing capabilities and boosting teachers’ professional development, she said.
But she argued that such a move was unjustified, as students and teachers had performed worse in certain areas in recent years.
“[The academic standards of students] are declining in terms of international assessments … and teachers showed no improvement in language tests; their proficiency in Chinese, English and Mandarin is poor,” she said at a panel meeting discussing the enhancement of teaching manpower for public sector schools.
