James Hon
( Deputy Director of Rights & Complaints Department, PTU )

In a recent open letter to school principals and teachers (23/4/2008) , Mr Michael Suen, the Secretary for Education, has shown good will and intention " to support the work of our teaching force." He has also outlined some of the major measures to be introduced in the coming year in the hope of creating "a stable environment for development, so that teachers can concentrate on enhancing their teaching effectiveness for the benefit of our students." However, well-intentioned as these measures might seem, whether they can really resolve all the problems frontline teachers face and help create a really stable teaching environment is undoubtedly in the negative.

Let's start from the kindergarten sector. Although the voucher scheme has been implemented, we have seen more problems created than resolved. Kindergarten teachers' workload has always been heavy and their pay is disproportionate to their work done. Stress related burnout amongst these teachers have already left them feeling physically and emotionally drained, eventually interfering with the quality of the care the children receive. With the voucher scheme in full swing, teachers have to attend courses after work to upgrade their qualifications in order to stay in the increasingly competitive field. Within their schools, on top of their already overloaded duties, they have to do all kinds of preparation work to meet EDB's requirements of the newly introduced External School Review policy. It is no wonder that kindergarten teachers are developing signs of mental and physical fatigue leading to dreading the work day, irritability, anger and job depression. To aggravate their plight, there is no sign of a stable and reasonable pay scale for these teachers even after they graduate from courses and have completed all the necessary work required of them. For kindergarten teachers, the skies have never been greyer.

The primary and secondary sectors have already experienced stormy weather in the past decade. Primary and secondary school teachers have been criticized, ridiculed, benchmarked, blemished, made redundant and jobless. It needs no elaboration here to cite all those data already amassed. Although Mr. Michael Suen, a more compassionate secretary for education than his predecessors, is trying to thaw the relationship between policy makers and frontline teachers, the measures he proposed do not seem to cut much ice in resolving the teachers'plight. School closure policy is still in force, lurking in the shadows awaiting victims to devour. Small class teaching is still denied to secondary schools. The additional capacity enhancement grants have been snatched out of teachers' and principals' hands, replaced by a Learning Support Grant only accessible to " eligible" schools. One has to admit that some measures, such as the cash grant for hiring one additional graduate teacher and the gradual reduction of student numbers in secondary classes, do help to relieve some of the pressure confronting secondary school teachers while implementing the new 334 system. Yet, considering the immense changes in the years to come and the enormous workload gradually placed upon teachers, the future is still bleak for our primary and secondary school colleagues.

Criticism is bound to gust in from all sides when we start to look at what has been going on in the tertiary sector. The cut-throat budget reduction has forced universities to downtrodden situations whereby the basic philosophy of tertiary education has been sidetracked and downgraded to business concerns. "Publish or perish" has become many a professor's survival motto interfering with their teaching duties. Non profit-making faculties face shut-down threats due to low intake. The most tragic phenomenon is of course the stupendous folly associated with the recent farce of the associate-degree-course controversy. Up till now, we can see no solution to honestly resolve the problems faced by thousands of youngsters so hopefully enrolled in the courses but hopelessly dumped into nowhere after graduation.

Mr. Michael Suen claims that he has been "listening carefully to the views of various stakeholders since taking up office as Secretary for Education." We do not doubt his sincerity and we thank him for melting the ice of the frozen solid relationship between government officials and frontline teachers. But, Mr. Suen, it is still freezing cold out there in the education sectors. The dawn of communication may have risen over the horizon, but we cannot help but dread the invasion of cold fronts with whirlwinds blowing away all your good will with the best of intentions.