Hong Kong's ethnic and linguistic minority immigrant students: An evaluation of educational support measures

Immigrants comprise 5% (350,000) of Hong Kong’s population of 7 million. 3.2% (14,000) of the school age population are ethnic minority immigrant (EM/I) students who register poor academic achievement in school particularly at senior secondary level when compared to local Chinese Hong Kong students.’ Over the last 7 years the government has rolled out support measures to meet the learning needs of these language minority immigrant students. Research reported here presents perceptions of the impact of the support measures. The aim was to answer the following two questions: Does the support have the potential to achieve the government’s stated objectives of minimising language and cultural barriers to school achievement, and are they facilitating the smooth integration of language minority immigrant students into Hong Kong society? The findings contradict the ‘smooth integration’ of Ethnic Minority students, revealing instead that a singularly focused pedagogical provision for Chinese language acquisition is too narrow. The findings also expose the role this language-targeted policy plays in the construction of social inequality in Hong Kong. There are absences such as unacknowledged culture diversity, unaddressed discrimination, and unrecognized pedagogical challenges emanating from teachers’ calls for more support. The conclusion is that the edu-scape of EM/I students in Hong Kong is fraught with ideological, cultural, linguistic and pedagogical complexities.