03/15/09
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On Pui Ching Matters |
In our days of PC until ~ 1965, the school Cert Exam was the primary measure of student academic performance. PC students usually took 10 subjects for the Exam. The grades were given on an absolute scale, for example “A” was given to a paper with an absolute score of 90 points (or higher), as far as I know The current School Cert Exam is different in many ways. Each student usually takes 8 subjects at a minimum; the best results from 6 subjects would be used to rank the student’s performance. “A “ grade is given 5 points, B 4, C 3, D 2, E 1. If a student has a total of 30 points from 6 of the best results, the student has full marks. Of course, if a student has 10 As, this student would be ranked higher than the one with 6 As, although both have 30 points. Furthermore, the grades are curve-based. For a difficult subject, and the average performance is poor, a score of better average can lead to an A grade. Therefore, it is not surprising one can get an A without having done very well on an absolute scale. There can be MORE “A”s given than the “A”s given on an absolute scale. Table I shows the School Cert results of PC Form 5 students in the past 10 years. As one can see, the results are pretty good, although 9 A 1 B may not constitute a 狀元. Compared to a school with a few “10 As” students, PC does not get the highly publicized headline news in the newspapers. If I remember correctly DGS once had ~ 4-6 狀元 in one year, this is very headline newsworthy. From various sources including students who took the School Cert recently and former HK teachers, the current School Cert Exam appears to be easier to excel. Table II shows the college path of PC Form 7 students. These students take the A level exam for advanced level subjects for university placement. There are usually 3 classes of Form 7 at PC, each class has about 30 students, totaling 90 students in Form 7. Unlike our days at PC, HK now has 8 UGC, i.e., HK government funded [1], funded universities, including the Hong Kong Institute of Education [2,3]. The Open University is not an UGC university, but has self-accreditation status [4]. Then there is Shue Yan University [5], the first private university in HK. The tuition for most of these universities is about $42,000 HKD. High school grads in HK have plenty of opportunities to get a higher education in HK, and PC grads do. As one can see in Table II, about 60-70 % are college bound in HK; many of them go to The Chinese University of Hong Kong, located near Shatin. About 15 to 20 % major in Engineering. I don’t know the percentage majoring in Science, but probably similar to those majoring in Engineering. Thus about 30-40 % are estimated to major in Science and Engineering, as compared to 80-90 % going into Science/Engineering in the “ old days”. Table I (Data collected by Principal Yip Chee-Tim, provided by 校監 Prof. KC Ho)
Table III and IV came from the PC School magazine (校刊) dated Dec. 2006. The small upper table in Table III seems to be at variance with some of the figures reported in Table II. But we shall ignore these discrepancies at this time. Form 7 students take A level exams (高考) for HK college entrance examination. It is important to note from Table III that PC Form 7 students did not perform so well compared to the other schools in pure Math, Statistics, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, History, Geography and English in achieving A grades, but better as a whole compared with all other schools. This means that we do not compete well against the best schools when it comes to more technical subjects, except in Computer Education where PC appears to be at top (see table III). Table III (From 校刊 dated Dec. 2006, provided by Prof. Kei-May Lau at HKUST, HKPC1972).
Table IV (From 校刊 dated Dec. 2006).
Table VI took some doing to understand. I have the help from an exchange student from the Chinese University of HK to explain the terms to me. We shall not focus on this table at this time. These are just comparative performance in various categories with other schools. It should be noted that if the student scores well at School Cert., they are eligible for early acceptance by all the universities in HK who compete to get these bright students. i.e. after Form 6 and in very exceptional and rare cases after Form 5, the student can be admitted into the university already. This very much affects the quality of students remaining in the school and as a result the A levels scores have been pulled down in the recent years since the adoption of this early admission policy. It is not clear if PC has had any early admission cases. As Simon Wong (1972,Yinshe) pointed out that there have been significant changes in the HK economy and the associated career opportunities. "Math and Science" are no longer as important as other skills. Very few good jobs in "science and engineering" in HK are available, other than in medicine or as university faculty. Few students follow the traditional PC path of going to US, or the West for advanced education as it is considered difficult, expensive and lengthy. Bright students opt for the business or finance path where "language and communication skills (especially in English)" and computer literacy are more important than math and science. I was told that at the Chinese University the brightest students are in medicine and finance. Engineering students are among the worst A level exam performers. PC appears to gear up on Computer Literacy Education. At this time, PC may be the top ranking school in Computer Education in HK, which seems to be the right to do. There are majors such as “ Logistics” and “ Actuary “ at an undergraduate level at HKU. There are great demands for them in the work market, and these jobs command high salaries. All these are just an indication of a changing time. Jobs in finance, logistics and business are service oriented, as the manufacturing, low/medium tech and production industries move to China, depleting the already dry job market in these areas. For some professions such as medicine, dentistry, law, our local professional qualification/admission requires the student to be qulified locally and to have the internship done in HK. For example, a medical student graduating from abroad would have a lot of difficulty, almost impossible, getting internship or externship posts in HK. So students aiming for these professions prefer to remain in HK for their university studies. Of course, PC should not abandon the tradition of academic excellence in math and science. However, PC must evolve in order to stay competitive with the best, and cater to the HK job market at the same time. These are serious underlying issues and challenges, especially with the upcoming change from 7 years of high school to 6 (back to the old way). In addition the privatization issue (actually partial-privatization, called Direct Subsidy Scheme, DSS, in HK, see references 6-9) has been looming over PC’s head for years. The deadline for decision to convert is 2012. The board of trustees must be actively studying this big issue. What are the ramifications of privatization? Of course, it means an increase in tuition across the board. At present time Form 1 to From 3 at PC are free. The tuition for students for Form 7ers is $9,000 HKD per academic year (probably 10 months long). The tuition for PC Primary school, a private school, is about $2,250 HKD per month, or ~ $ 22,500 per academic year. Once PC Middle School is partial-privatized, the tuition needs to go up, although there are still subsidies from the HK Government. The Direct Subsidy Scheme, DSS, provides a lump sum per capital per student per year by the HK government [6-9]. My information from an St Paul Coed-er is that St Paul, a DSS school, now charges $48,000 HKD/academic year, more than going to HKUST. DGS, also a DSS school, charges $38,000 per year. The educational policy of the HK Government is unstable at best, and chaotic at times due to the lack a long-ranged leadership in the Education Ministry. Interestingly expressed by PC Principal Yip Chee-Tim once that HK Government first encouraged PC to go on complete subsidy, now the government “ encourages” PC to go the other way, (政府唔嫁又嫁). What direction should PC turn in view of the ever-changing education policy?
PC and the Board now face many important issues, and appropriate decisions
must be made to meet the challenge to guide our Alma Mater to calm waters.
What are decisions? Would PC go DSS? If PC Middle School (an aided school)
is to be linked to PC Primary School (a private school) so that the 2
schools can enjoy through train facility (one straight dragon), then PC
Middle School must turn DSS. The systems of the two schools have to be
identical (DSS and private can be considered as identical because of the
autonomy allowed with DSS schools) and HK government does not allow private
schools to turn aided. It seems that PC has to go DSS, there is no way not
to. PCers must keep our faith in PC and be ready to lend a helping hand whenever it is needed. We can talk about Red and Blue spirit all day long. Talks are cheap, only actions count. It is indeed the case of:
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