Teacher unemployment is approaching?

The Secretary for Education, Yang Yunxiong, briefed the "Policy Address" at the Legislative Council's Panel on Education on Monday (18th) and responded to questions from legislators.

In addition to the arrangement for the raising of the national flag, two educational policy considerations related to teachers are also mentioned, namely the formulation of guidelines on teacher conduct and the study of whether to revise the current permanent teacher registration system in Hong Kong.

The "Code of Professional Education in Hong Kong" is the only document that defines whether teachers are dereliction of their duties or incompetent. The "Preparatory Committee on Professional Code of Educational Workers" (the Council of Conduct) composed of representatives from educational organizations drafted and promulgated it in 1990. The bureau will also refer to cases when dealing with cases of teachers suspected of being unethical.

In 2016, the Code of Conduct prepared practical guidelines and reference examples on the "Code". However, it was strongly opposed during subsequent consultations and the practical guidelines were shelved. The current content of the entire "Code" is not as significant as that of 1990. respectively.

An anti-regulation campaign broke out in 2019. From the end of June 2019 to December 2020, the Education Bureau received a total of 269 complaints about teachers' professional malpractice, and took disciplinary actions against 154 teachers, including cancellation of teacher registration for three of them Comparing the number of cases of teacher malpractice or professional misconduct disclosed by the Education Bureau in the past five years, the number of cases in 2020 is the highest in five years.

After experiencing different social movements, it can be seen from the latest number of complaints that the current "Code" does not seem to be able to effectively regulate the behavior and speech of teachers.

Therefore, if the government formulates guidelines for teacher conduct, setting out the punishments for unethical teachers, it may help to provide teachers with clearer guidelines and prevent teachers from accidentally touching the legal red line or conveying wrong values ​​to school children.

However, compared to the simplicity of formulating guidelines, education policies actually have more complicated issues to be dealt with, including the problems caused by the killing of schools.

Retirement and career change may not work

Last Monday (11th) the Education Bureau submitted a document to the Legislative Council Panel on Education, explaining the Education Bureau’s plan for the allocation of primary and secondary schools and related measures in recent years. It pointed out that the local birth rate has continued to fall and the school-age population is expected to fall in the future. The problem has been resolved by " "Transitional" changed to "structural."

The document revealed for the first time that the bureau had discussed with the school-sponsoring organization to gradually close or replace schools in areas with a large number of surplus places for a long time, and government schools would also be included in the consideration list.

At the same time, the bureau stated that there are no plans to implement small-class education in secondary schools. Under the influence of three factors, the decline in the population of school-age children, the killing of schools, and the failure to transform the secondary education model, it can be expected that there will be a wave of teacher unemployment.

Although Yang Runxiong said that he would discuss with the school-running organizations and the academic community, he hopes to come up with a plan that can cope with the reduction of students and stabilize the teaching team, and he said that he will assist teachers to retire or change careers.

However, educational work experience does not necessarily help change careers, and retirement is only the choice of a small number of senior teachers. Therefore, the government should design short-term and long-term solutions.

What's more, the decline in the population of school children is no longer a "transitional" problem, and it will be difficult to alleviate the situation in the short term.

In the short term, the Education Bureau can provide teachers with an education subsidy to encourage them to suspend their work for further education, so as to temporarily alleviate the problem of oversupply of teachers.

Social problems are always intertwined. The government should avoid over-segmentation and hope to solve the problem independently. To cope with the decline in the birth population, the government must work hard to build Hong Kong into a livable city, and let the public see hope. A vision for the future can effectively stimulate public fertility.

Does the government take the lead in killing small classes in official schools?

The economy should be sustainable. GDP is not the only high-level civil servants and accountable bureaucrats. They should "have those who can live".