Ethnic Minority Students in Hong Kong - Free Essay Sample

Introduction

In recent years, instances of conceivable inconsistent treatment of the students in ethnic minority groups in the education system of Hong Kong have been detailed by the media and described by the social workers as well as the non-governmental organizations (Lee et al., 2016). This issue has gotten progressively notable due to Hong Kong's socioeconomic changes and new education policies, which have disproportionately influenced several minority ethnic groups. Albeit, discrimination of racial purportedly occurs in numerous everyday life settings in Hong Kong. This research will focus on the perceptions of students in the ethnic minority on the opportunities of higher education in Hong Kong. To more readily comprehend the impediments, some students from the ethnic minority may confront while interacting with the education system in Hong Kong. Various interviews will be conducted among the parents, education officials, teachers, social workers, and students from the communities of the Hong Kong ethnic minority.

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The research will majorly focus on the requirement for more significant qualitative exploration of the student necessities of Hong Kong's ethnic minority communities to more likely advise makers of the law and policies on the way of moving ahead. The article on the policies of education affecting immigrants in Hong Kong perceived the need to facilitate the ideal developments in the society by providing educational support to young immigrants based on their needs (Walker, 2015). Confidently, this study may add to these Hong Kong endeavors and further inspire the exploration as well as more prominent conversation on the student requirements, human rights protection, and non-segregation privileges in the ethnic minority groups.

The Focus of This Chapter

This research will be used to analyze the critical issues related to education as they will be brought up by the discussions and the accessible studies about the student need in the ethnic minority groups, for instance, education policies, reports of the government, and the press reports. This will consider Hong Kong's international obligations on human rights, local developments, and equal opportunities for the law. This study will give an overall background of education strategies influencing the groups of ethnic minorities. It will also review the interviews and the methodology used in the project. The relevant standards of human rights appropriate to Hong Kong and current improvements concerning equity in law opportunities, arguing that specific policies of education may constitute racial discrimination that might be direct or indirect. Further, the conclusion of the proposal will be provided by suggesting various focuses on the bill that proposes the same chances and elimination of racial discrimination in the future.

Background

Hong Kong is a Chinese community that is very predominant. The country is mostly homogeneous society. Most of the ethically speaking people are the Han Chinese who are the Chinese. According to the Home Affairs department (2019), the population By-Census of 2016 indicated that the Chinese comprise 92% while the non-Chinese speaking people were about 8% by way of self-identification. Not every group of non-Chinese speaking individuals live permanently in Hong Kong. However, the number of occupants from other ethnic and cultural backgrounds has expanded quickly as of late. Since the mid-1990s, the immigrants have shown up in noteworthy figures (Pang, 2016). As per the conducted census, the minorities of non-Chinese roughly comprise 7% of the entire population, though a few analysts gauge a higher figure (Jus et al., 2015). The recent investigations carried out on the necessities of individuals from these societies propose that they face different troubles acclimating to life in Hong Kong. Various interrelated elements, including deficiency in skills of the Chinese language, absence of information about the accessible services, challenges discovering the opportunities of employment and places of schools, as well as prejudicial treatment (Wong, 2015).

Before summarizing the focuses raised in the interviews to more likely comprehend the difficulties confronting the communities of the minority in the education sector, Hong Kong's system of education will be reviewed in this section. Approaches that have a specific effect on communities of the ethnic minority, and the government endeavors to address a portion of their needs. In Hong Kong, it is compulsory for students aged 6 to 15 to acquire education, which is freely provided by the government (Odafe, 2016). Learners who wish to proceed with their studies and qualify may go to government schools and learning institutions aided for a moderately little charge.

In the initial years, Hong Kong learning for both secondary and primary education starts with the application of the school placements that is made possible through the use of the existing two methods that facilitate the process. Foremost, students can directly apply the deployment to their preferred schools during the phase of discretionary places admission. The learning institutions are permitted by this system to reserve some specific areas that might be occupied at the school discretion. This is mostly as per the point system that offers an inclination to understudies whose siblings or parents learned at the school. The school must keep the records of the application. However, no school should uncover the dismissal of any student. The learners who fail to get allocated via this system are then required to submit their application via the central allocation method. The system assigns the places of schools following the most random and complicated process that takes into account several criteria, which include the school proximity to the homes of students (Lee et al., 2016). Some researchers argue that they have never come across any student from the minority communities that have secured a place to local, the schools of mainstream Chinese medium utilizing the central allocation (Kuai & Tsung, 2019). They state that primary candidates involving in the system of central distribution are required to fill the application form to indicate whether they speak chines or not (Verhoeven et al., 2019). The ethnic minority students who show non-familiarity in speaking Chinese get allocated places in the learning institutions that traditionally accept ethnic marginalized students. In a couple of situations where students of ethnic minorities fail to show whether they speak Chinese, they get apportioned spaces in local Chinese medium learning institutions in their areas.

Till 1998, most of the schools in Hong Kong utilized English while teaching (Zhang, 2016). However, a significant shift of policy, which significantly impacted the students in communities of ethnic minorities inadvertently, was introduced by the government of Hong Kong in the school year that started in 1998 (Yuan, 2016). The introduction policy emphasized more on the educational advantages of conducting the learning process in the mother tongue. Even if there were good pedagogical reasons for the teaching policy of mother tongue adoption for the level of native Cantonese speakers, the policies' full implications for the students who do not speak Chinese has never been put into consideration adequately. Undoubtedly, the teaching of the first language suggests that all students of Hong Kong converse in a similar mother tongue, that is, Cantonese, which may not be the situation for the children who are not Chinese. Numerous Hong Kong students from groups of ethnic minorities are incapable of communicating well in Chinese. However, ethnic minority students who can comfortably communicate in Cantonese are unable to write or read to attend Chinese medium schools. After the policies of using the first language were introduced, the number of conceivable optional learning institutions that these ethnic minorities could reasonably go to was decreased (Tse & Hui, 2016). The two patterns, expanding movement and the first language showing strategy, have prompted inadequate places of schools for learners from an ethnic minority in the government-funded scheme of education.

There is variation in the education quality provided by the schools to the learners from the ethnic minority groups. However, the education standards of some schools have been questioned by non-governmental organizations. Some of the sited issues consist of inadequate training for the educators in multicultural classroom teaching, poor examinational results, language differences leading to poor communication between teachers and parents. While more solid contrasts between schools are fundamental to decide and address this problem viably, language barriers, the more constrained school selection, potential standards on students not speaking Chinese joining some of the renown English medium schools, might surely prompt inconsistent access by students in the ethnic minority communities to more great institutions of learning. Some have additionally faulted the system of education for not giving the non-Chinese speaking students adequate or proper Chinese language classes. Therefore, learners may fail to acquire essential skills of Chinese for more prominent access to places of schools

The scheme of providing support to schools gives a considerable grant for each non-Chinese talking learner in participation. The learning institutions may utilize the funding to offer additional programs like language classes. Additionally, the regime claims to have stretched out its effort to make sure that data arrives at the families of ethnic minorities and children, not in school, get a chance in places of schools. Likewise, information is accessible at the air terminal for recently showed up non-Chinese immigrants. The administration has also consented to fortify projects for educating and learning Chinese and perceives that the absence of Chinese language abilities presents probably the best snag to reconciliation by the ethnic minority community. The government offers help for a particular non-governmental organization to provide language programs for new debuts, together with grown-ups. The legislature likewise chose to start the system of Central Allocation to children of the ethnic minority, which could significantly build the quantities of schools accessible and place them on equal balance with students locally.

Conclusion

There is the least representation of the ethnic minority students in the local tertiary institutions in Hong Kong despite the rapid compulsory growth in the stage of education. This study aims to critically evaluate the effectiveness of support policies by the government and practices for promoting the capacity of the members of the ethnic minority students to access higher learning. The study calls for a holistic system of policies that could drum up the minority youths that feel underrepresented to facilitate their wellbeing, social and economic inclusion within the movement of multicultural education.