Child prodigy Arjun Singh left out on a limb

Child prodigy left out on a limb
Dennis Chong
Sep 15, 2011
South China Morning Post 

Arjun Singh aspires to be Hong Kong's youngest ethnic Indian to enter university. But the 12-year-old does not even have a secondary school to go to.

The physics prodigy has spent endless hours in the past two years on a whiteboard at his home to memorise formulae and practise university entrance exam questions.

He recently received four As and a B in the International General Certificate of Secondary Education, equivalent to Hong Kong's now defunct Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination.

He is one of the very few pupils allowed to study at home under Hong Kong's compulsory education laws.

"I have no peers. I would like to have an association with people of the same age," Singh said. "I have a flexible schedule. I can study on Sunday and play on weekdays."

In 2009, then a fifth-grader, he withdrew from an international school which refused to upgrade him.

Since then, according to his mother Anita Singh, he has not been able to find a school, either because the schools said they did not have the resources to take him or they only taught in Chinese.

"Hong Kong does not have enough facilities to cater for the needs of gifted children," she said.

In Hong Kong, there are more than 10,000 gifted children based on international criteria that define prodigies as the top 2 per cent of the pupil population.

But many schools may not be equipped to treat these pupils with care, according to Fred Lam Yun-fu of the Hong Kong Association of Parents of Gifted Children.

"In elite schools, these children can be allowed to learn separately. But smaller schools may have problems in dealing with them," Lam said.

One teacher at an Islamic school said schools for ethnic minorities faced constraints. "If there are four or five students, they can go to split classes, but usually there is just one," he said.

Stephen Tommis, executive director of the Hong Kong Academy for Gifted Education, said: "A lot of schools need to take the concept of gifted education on board and understand the needs of gifted learners. We are recommending that every school should have a gifted education manager. We are working with the government."

The government currently provides guidelines for school heads to provide "accelerated learning" for talented children.

In response to Singh's case, the Education Bureau said the authorities encouraged and supported schools to cater for the needs of their gifted students through a school-based approach.

Anita Singh said the government should better train local teachers to cater for the needs of ethnic minorities. "It's not just my son. I suspect there are many who are not recognised and their talent wasted. They may become the worst kids at schools," she said.

Her son, who is studying for examinations that would gain him admission to a United States university, said there were many who could not fit in.

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