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Repeating the year v. continuing in a lower band class

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  1. #1

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    Repeating the year v. continuing in a lower band class

    1) In Europe if a student is bad and fails several subjects, he has to repeat the year.
    2) In HK if a student is bad he is put in a lower band class. In my daughter's school there is A, B, C, D. D is the worse, and is made up of students who fail in many subjects.

    With the HK system, students pass, but then the worse students go to Band 3 schools, can't go to university, and are destined to manual works. Basically from primary school your life is set out for you, and this is why you have so much emphasis on private tutoring, to try to avoid your primary school kids to go into C or D classes. But then it's just a rat race, since the worse 50% will go to C or D. You might have quite clever children also in C and D. But they are still destined to band 2-3 secondary schools, and manual work with salaries barely sufficient for survival. The only way for a not-smart kid to go to university is to have rich parents and do the degree in another country.

    With the European system, students fail and repeat the year, but then they have a shot at doing well in subsequent years. Also, since smart and less smart students are together, smart students pull the less smart up.

    I guess at the end the HK system is better for very smart kids, who can educate themselves faster since they are surrounded by equally smart kids. On the other hand, it's a horrible system for stupid kids, which robs all chances for upward social mobility. Money may contribute for some lack of brains (e.b. buy paying a lot of tutoring or foreign university), but for a sizable proportion of HK kids (the poor and less smart) life is destined to be quite brutal.

    Last edited by Philips; 12-05-2021 at 11:11 AM.
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  2. #2

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    Yup, HK education entrenched social divide rather than improve it. There are some good discussions of this topic on this thread:

    https://geoexpat.com/forum/71/thread359899.html


  3. #3

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    Quote Originally Posted by Philips:
    1) In Europe if a student is bad and fails several subjects, he has to repeat the year.
    2) In HK if a student is bad he is put in a lower band class. In my daughter's school there is A, B, C, D. D is the worse, and is made up of students who fail in many subjects.

    With the HK system, students pass, but then the worse students go to Band 3 schools, can't go to university, and are destined to manual works. Basically from primary school your life is set out for you, and this is why you have so much emphasis on private tutoring, to try to avoid your primary school kids to go into C or D classes. But then it's just a rat race, since the worse 50% will go to C or D. You might have quite clever children also in C and D. But they are still destined to band 2-3 secondary schools, and manual work with salaries barely sufficient for survival. The only way for a not-smart kid to go to university is to have rich parents and do the degree in another country.

    With the European system, students fail and repeat the year, but then they have a shot at doing well in subsequent years. Also, since smart and less smart students are together, smart students pull the less smart up.

    I guess at the end the HK system is better for very smart kids, who can educate themselves faster since they are surrounded by equally smart kids. On the other hand, it's a horrible system for stupid kids, which robs all chances for upward social mobility. Money may contribute for some lack of brains (e.b. buy paying a lot of tutoring or foreign university), but for a sizable proportion of HK kids (the poor and less smart) life is destined to be quite brutal.
    Mate, if you can, then try and get your daughter into an international school. I get that it's expensive, but try and see it as an 'investment' in her wellbeing (if not her education!)

    The local system is fine at certain points, and anecdotal evidence suggests that Local Primary + International Secondary often offers excellent academic outcomes, but long term she'll develop more life skills, and a greater love of life long learning, away from the endless cramming and military style discipline of the local system.

  4. #4

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    Quote Originally Posted by Philips:
    1) In Europe if a student is bad and fails several subjects, he has to repeat the year.
    2) In HK if a student is bad he is put in a lower band class. In my daughter's school there is A, B, C, D. D is the worse, and is made up of students who fail in many subjects.

    With the HK system, students pass, but then the worse students go to Band 3 schools, can't go to university, and are destined to manual works. Basically from primary school your life is set out for you, and this is why you have so much emphasis on private tutoring, to try to avoid your primary school kids to go into C or D classes. But then it's just a rat race, since the worse 50% will go to C or D. You might have quite clever children also in C and D. But they are still destined to band 2-3 secondary schools, and manual work with salaries barely sufficient for survival. The only way for a not-smart kid to go to university is to have rich parents and do the degree in another country.

    With the European system, students fail and repeat the year, but then they have a shot at doing well in subsequent years. Also, since smart and less smart students are together, smart students pull the less smart up.

    I guess at the end the HK system is better for very smart kids, who can educate themselves faster since they are surrounded by equally smart kids. On the other hand, it's a horrible system for stupid kids, which robs all chances for upward social mobility. Money may contribute for some lack of brains (e.b. buy paying a lot of tutoring or foreign university), but for a sizable proportion of HK kids (the poor and less smart) life is destined to be quite brutal.
    I wouldnt use the words stupid kids. For a lot it's just they have attention disorders, or the teachers are useless, or both. When I had good teachers I was top of the class, when I had the bad ones I would not pay attention.
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  5. #5

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    In Germany you have 3 different tiers of schools, with only one leading to a degree that makes you admissible to university.

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  6. #6

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    At many if not most of the Intl schools in HK (ESF and other schools with UK roots).

  7. #7

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    Personally as someone who went to one of the worst secondary schools in England (about 40% of students got 5 A-C grades at GCSE) this system is pretty good. By being in set 1 for all subjects you actually have students who want to learn in your class and are able to do very well even in a bad school.

    The top classes generally get the better teachers too.

    Is it fair? Well I guess it's skewed more in favour of those with high intelligence, but also those who put some effort in. I'd say that's quite fair overall and better than random.

    If they were distributed evenly I would've been fookkked. Fond memories include sitting in the second floor chemistry lab watching backpacks sail past our windows and smash to the grassy floor, from the 5th floor windows of the science block where the year 10, set 5 lesson was taking place. Fun times!

    Now my opinion (which I guess people may disagree with) having been in such a school was that the kids in set 5 had themselves to blame. There are exceptions such as learning difficulties which is another discussion. In general they were lazy and made no attempt to improve. We can ask some questions about their backgrounds, etc, but plenty of kids with very poor backgrounds were able to move up by putting some work in. Personally I don't have much sympathy for those guys as they were the ones most likely to start a fight with you for making eye contact.

    Another issue is that in HK, parental assistance or tutors seems to be the norm. This is what really leaves people at a disadvantage if they have no such help. The system and curriculum do not provide all the tools for independent learning for any hardworking student to make it on their own. This is a real shame and probably one of the biggest problems with HK schools IMO

    Last edited by justjoe86; 12-05-2021 at 01:24 PM.

  8. #8

    Don't think there is such thing as a "European" system. UK still has grammar schools in many counties, where your entire secondary education is based on a result of a test you take at 10 years old.


  9. #9

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    The major difference vs other places is if you go to a shit school in other countries, you can still potentially go to college or/and make a decent living.

    Otherwise, your claim to be fame for the "leftover" professions in HK can be only made via youtube

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rN5Jcyz1pH4

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  10. #10

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    I’m not so smart, but I can’t help but think of all the university/ college graduates out there who are unable to land a role even at Starbucks.

    I would say that for a lot of people, going to college and getting a cushy well paid office job just ain’t going to work. This doesn’t mean this isn’t what a lot of people don’t want.

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