Supporting Teachers in Facing Educational Challenges

The Youth I.D.E.A.S. announced its latest report on
“Supporting Teachers in Facing Educational Challenges”

The Youth I.D.E.A.S. (established by HKFYG Youth Research Centre) has released its study on “Supporting Teachers in Facing Educational Challenges”.

For the surveyed 354 Hong Kong secondary school teachers, 35.3% worked over 60 hours a week, 14.5% of them even worked over 71 hours or above. Most respondents hoped to reduced administrative work (66.4%), while they wanted to spend more time on engaging with students (61.3%) and lesson preparation work (57.1%). Teacher Interview Cases revealed that workload increased during the pandemic as teachers need to re-design lesson contents for e-learning , learning gap among students were widen at the same time.

On the other hand, 72.9% teachers agreed that students’ self-directed learning is an ideal teaching model. With reference to Singapore experience, Ministry of Education announced that home-based learning day will be implemented in June 2021 and it will become a long-term policy. In Taiwan, a flexible learning curriculum was also included in the updated school syllabus. While in Hong Kong, an expert interviewed pointed out that school can act as a learning hub for teachers, students and community to exchange ideas.

The study recommended the Education Bureau to increase the class-and-teacher-ratio and fix a mechanism for future calculation of the ratio, review the professional career track so both teaching and administration paths have an equal promotion opportunity. The study also proposed student self-directed learning day. The Education Bureau can set up a platform to organize the teaching materials.

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