Showing posts with label Arjun Singh. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Arjun Singh. Show all posts
Friday, August 24, 2012
NGO takes up case of prodigy's schooling
NGO takes up case of prodigy's schooling
South China Morning Post
By Dennis Chong
2011-09-27
Hong Kong Unison to complain about education department's inability to find suitable establishment for gifted Indian student, citing discrimination A long-running wrangle over an ethnic Indian boy took a new turn yesterday when an NGO said it would file a complaint with the equal opportunity watchdog against the Education Bureau for failing to find a proper school for the pupil.
Hong Kong Unison said it would lodge its complaint with the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC) on behalf of Arjun Singh. This comes after Unison's threat last month to take the government to court for failing to provide equal education opportunities for ethnic minorities.
Singh, 12, a member of the Hong Kong Academy for Gifted Education, has been schooled at home for the past two years because his parents said they could not find a school to satisfy his special learning needs. Singh has an IQ of 120 to 129 - which is near the benchmark of 130 for prodigies - according to a cognitive test he took using the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children.
Several schools refused his parents' demand to admit Singh into a more advanced class; he would have entered Secondary One in the new academic year.
Unison executive director Fermi Wong Wai-fun said she would submit a racial discrimination complaint to the EOC. She criticised the Education Bureau for failing to find a proper school for Singh and showing indifference to the pupil when he sought help. "This would not happen if
he was not Indian," she said.
Unison is also collecting support from 100 families in its bid to sue the government for failing to offer ethnic minorities a chance to integrate into Hong Kong society through the education system. It says local schools have failed to provide quality Chinese-language education to ethnic minorities, hindering their chances to climb the social ladder.
Human rights lawyer Chong Yiu-kwong said it would be hard to prove Singh (pictured) had been the object of racial discrimination, because he sought a gifted education in English.
Inequality arising from language barriers would be a form of indirect discrimination that was difficult to substantiate, he said.
EOC chairman Lam Woon-kwong said recently that Singh's parents had played a role in their son's predicament, deciding to withdraw him from school in 2009. "If they can afford it, there are many types of English schools in Hong Kong," he said.
But it was odd that the Education Bureau had failed to find a proper school for the boy in two years.
"It is strange that a 12-year-old could be staying at home without having to go to school," he said. "If the problem lay with the schools, the Education Bureau should have helped him find one."
An Education Bureau spokeswoman said it had tried to help Singh find a school since 2009, when they first learned of his case. The bureau would not say how many pupils are
homeschooled in Hong Kong.
http://easss.com/edu/home
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
Language issues plague outstanding ethnic minority students
Language issues plague outstanding minority students
2011-10-21
By Andrea Deng (HK Edition)
China Daily
Hong Kong's aspirations to become recognized as a focal point for top quality education may be impeded by the absence of effective measures regarding gifted students of ethnic minorities.
In 2010, the number of ethnic students enrolled in university degree programs in Hong Kong was zero, despite the fact that there were many bright and even gifted students from ethnic minorities.
The major issue is that many of these high-calibre students are unable to gain sufficient mastery over the Chinese language.
Thus, they are unable to advance scholastically.
Arjun Singh, the 12-year-old Indian prodigy, with an IQ of 129, who scored almost straight A's in the International General Certificate of Secondary Education, would not have been out of school for more than two years, if the Education Bureau (EDB) had referred him to one of the city's English schools that offer gifted programs.
"All I needed from the EDB was just the information on what kind of gifted schools are out there, and a recommendation letter from the EDB. I can take the assessment tests myself. The EDB could be more flexible," said Singh.
Fermi Wong Wai-fun, executive director of Hong Kong Unison, who has been assisting Singh, said she was once told by an EDB officer that Singh's case "is a very new case for the bureau - because Arjun is a member of an ethnic minority."
"We don't have the experience to handle the case," Wong quoted the officer.
The Indian boy is indeed a special case. Although there have been criticisms of the facilities for gifted students, local students can more or less obtain "enrichment classes" to pursue deeper levels of math or science, either at their own school or the courses provided by the Hong Kong Academy for Gifted Education. But nearly all are taught in Chinese.
James Lung Wai-man, an activist for minority children, said that there is no gifted program or facilities in the city's 20-odd ethnic minority schools. Meanwhile, only very few minority children attend local schools that supply enrichment classes.
At the crux of the issue, Lung noted, is the EDB's pedagogical fallacy that "if they (minority children) do not learn Chinese, they are seriously in trouble", because most universities require students to have Chinese capability through the Joint University Programmes Admissions System.
Most minority children fail to learn Chinese well. Their overall scholastic performance is overshadowed by bad grades in Chinese, no matter how well they do in other subjects.
Lung gave an example of a 9-year-old Nepalese boy who loves to write English essays. The boy used to send some of his writing to Chief Executive Donald Tsang and Chief Secretary for Administration Stephen Lam, when Lam was secretary for constitutional and mainland affairs.
But when the boy's father asked the class teacher to help advance the boy in his pursuits, the father was told that the boy should improve his Chinese because he'd been doing poorly in that subject.
"It's ridiculous that a child who is good at English writing is required to be good at Chinese," Lung said.
In Singh's case, he exhibits outstanding caliber in math and has a strong affection for physics, and it does not make much sense to require the boy to be capable of reading Chinese, not to mention that he is fully capable of handling English.
The result of that fallacy is that many minority children being buried by the inability to reading Chinese, Lung said.
"Ironically, there are Indian students who don't speak Chinese as well, but can be enrolled in Hong Kong's universities," Lung said.
http://easss.com/edu/home
2011-10-21
By Andrea Deng (HK Edition)
China Daily
Hong Kong's aspirations to become recognized as a focal point for top quality education may be impeded by the absence of effective measures regarding gifted students of ethnic minorities.
In 2010, the number of ethnic students enrolled in university degree programs in Hong Kong was zero, despite the fact that there were many bright and even gifted students from ethnic minorities.
The major issue is that many of these high-calibre students are unable to gain sufficient mastery over the Chinese language.
Thus, they are unable to advance scholastically.
Arjun Singh, the 12-year-old Indian prodigy, with an IQ of 129, who scored almost straight A's in the International General Certificate of Secondary Education, would not have been out of school for more than two years, if the Education Bureau (EDB) had referred him to one of the city's English schools that offer gifted programs.
"All I needed from the EDB was just the information on what kind of gifted schools are out there, and a recommendation letter from the EDB. I can take the assessment tests myself. The EDB could be more flexible," said Singh.
Fermi Wong Wai-fun, executive director of Hong Kong Unison, who has been assisting Singh, said she was once told by an EDB officer that Singh's case "is a very new case for the bureau - because Arjun is a member of an ethnic minority."
"We don't have the experience to handle the case," Wong quoted the officer.
The Indian boy is indeed a special case. Although there have been criticisms of the facilities for gifted students, local students can more or less obtain "enrichment classes" to pursue deeper levels of math or science, either at their own school or the courses provided by the Hong Kong Academy for Gifted Education. But nearly all are taught in Chinese.
James Lung Wai-man, an activist for minority children, said that there is no gifted program or facilities in the city's 20-odd ethnic minority schools. Meanwhile, only very few minority children attend local schools that supply enrichment classes.
At the crux of the issue, Lung noted, is the EDB's pedagogical fallacy that "if they (minority children) do not learn Chinese, they are seriously in trouble", because most universities require students to have Chinese capability through the Joint University Programmes Admissions System.
Most minority children fail to learn Chinese well. Their overall scholastic performance is overshadowed by bad grades in Chinese, no matter how well they do in other subjects.
Lung gave an example of a 9-year-old Nepalese boy who loves to write English essays. The boy used to send some of his writing to Chief Executive Donald Tsang and Chief Secretary for Administration Stephen Lam, when Lam was secretary for constitutional and mainland affairs.
But when the boy's father asked the class teacher to help advance the boy in his pursuits, the father was told that the boy should improve his Chinese because he'd been doing poorly in that subject.
"It's ridiculous that a child who is good at English writing is required to be good at Chinese," Lung said.
In Singh's case, he exhibits outstanding caliber in math and has a strong affection for physics, and it does not make much sense to require the boy to be capable of reading Chinese, not to mention that he is fully capable of handling English.
The result of that fallacy is that many minority children being buried by the inability to reading Chinese, Lung said.
"Ironically, there are Indian students who don't speak Chinese as well, but can be enrolled in Hong Kong's universities," Lung said.
http://easss.com/edu/home
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