Droves of people are leaving Hong Kong, including many teachers who feel pressure to self-censor their political opinions both inside and outside the classroom. This has prompted the Hong Kong Association of the Heads of Secondary Schools (HKAHSS) to express concern over the loss of talent. It has called on the local authorities to create a better environment for educators and students.
According to surveys conducted by the association, the number of teachers resigning in the 2020-2021 school year rose sharply, doubling the number seen for the 2019-2020 and 2018-2019 school years.
Among the 140 schools surveyed, an average of 7.1 teachers left from each school, including highly-sought teachers with middle-level and senior level teaching experience.
Students are also leaving in large numbers. Surveys taken for the 2020-2021 school year revealed an average of 32 dropouts per school, which is almost a whole class. Of those, 60 percent have left Hong Kong.
“This ferocious tide of departure is different from the emigration tide in the past,” HKAHSS said in a press release on May 30. “From our observation, teachers who are leaving are taking their whole family with them, and they even close their Provident Fund [retirement] accounts. It seems that they are determined to leave for good. We are very worried about when this net outflow of human education talent will stop.”
It continued saying that in the past, experienced teachers usually would not leave until retirement age, so schools had plenty of time to help younger teachers gain experience. But what is happening now is that many experienced teachers are deciding to leave with very short notice, and some have even decided to leave in the middle of the school year. Teacher recruitment is also underwhelming, while in the past, schools would receive hundreds of resumes for a single teaching vacancy.
Good salaries won’t help keep many of these teachers, as what they are looking for is a culture where they feel respected and can do their jobs professionally and independently, without government interference, it said.
The press release also commented on the many students that are leaving the city with their parents as the city faces political turmoil due to the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) power grabs in Hong Kong’s governing institutions. It warned that the brain drain today, and in the years to come, will seriously affect the future development of Hong Kong.
Political Pressure
Since the CCP forced its National Security Law on Hong Kong in 2020, teachers have faced political pressure. For example, teachers who discuss politics in class face being reported to the authorities by pro-CCP staff, which could result in them losing their teaching credentials.According to a recent public notice, over the past three years, there have been 502 cases where teachers were found to be in violation of “professional ethics.” Of these, 344 cases were related to participation in the 2019 “anti-extradition” protests.
From 2019 to April of this year, 27 teachers have lost their teaching credentials, and another 69 teachers have received letters of censure for discussing “controversial political incidents” in the classroom. Some teachers also received censure letters from the education bureau for posting remarks in support of the protesters on social media.
Democratic Party education policy spokesperson Chu Tsz-lok stated that it should be the teacher’s personal freedom to be able to express their opinions on social media, and that discussing controversial incidents can encourage students to think from multiple perspectives.
“The censure creates a chilling effect that discourages teachers from teaching knowledge and reasoning beyond books,” Chu said. “The Hong Kong Democratic Party is concerned that the government’s excessive interference in teachers’ daily lives may exacerbate the loss of local teachers.”
The Hong Kong government also began promoting “national security education” in the curriculum last year, requiring the teaching of the CCP’s “national security” agenda in all subjects across primary and secondary schools. Seeing this as the Chinese regime’s efforts to brainwash their children, many Hong Kong parents decided to leave.
Zandra Mok Yee-Tun, a former political assistant at the Bureau of Labor and Welfare, is one example. He recently revealed that he has moved to the UK with his family, mainly driven by concerns for the next generation, as he doesn’t want his children to become “two-faced” people due to the so called “national security” indoctrination, which just protects the security and interests of the CCP.
According to a Hong Kong Public Opinion Research Institute survey taken March 21–24 this year, 24 percent of respondents said they have plans to emigrate. More than half of this group identified the education environment for their children and the future of their families as the most important factor in their decision to leave Hong Kong permanently.
