Business Briefs.

(From South China Morning Post)

Q Do you think the English results are acceptable?

Enough of all this criticism of teachers. First we get the South China Morning Post telling us that a full quarter of primary students failed basic English tests. The fact that this means three-quarters were successful seemed to pass the reporter by - though I imagine your paper schools its reporters that shock or horror stories sell and not plain facts. As if that were not enough, we, the teachers, are then treated to letter after letter implying that this sorry state of affairs is our fault, fairly and squarely. So now allow an English teacher to respond.

I work as a native English-speaking teacher in a Chinese-medium secondary school that caters for students who are academically below the average set by Hong Kong's gargantuan examination machine. They are the future unemployment statistics, or perhaps your gas station attendants and McDonald's counter staff. In a system that provides only one set of school-leaving exams (the Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination) for all academic levels, they are doomed to fail, and this fact has been drummed into them by every test they have failed since Primary One.

They fail in English, and therefore dislike the subject, more than most. It means nothing to them, as they recognise the truth in their daily lives that Hong Kong is, and never has been, an international city; it is a Cantonese-speaking community with a thin, cosmetic layer of expats …