Four in 10 city teachers want out, union poll shows
Most cited political pressure for planning to quit or being inclined to do so
in 10 Hong Kong teachers have decided or are inclined to leave the profession, with most citing increasing political pressure for wanting to quit, according to a survey by one of the city’s biggest trade unions.
More than 10 per cent of the 1,178 educators polled by the Professional Teachers’ Union (PTU) revealed they were resigning this year, while most of those looking to stay pointed to family and finances as their motivation.
Head teachers and other educators who spoke to the Post reported similar trends of more teachers resigning or planning to leave this academic year in the wake of the national security law, many of them looking to emigrate with their families to countries such as Britain.
The landscape of the city’s education sector has been rapidly changing since the introduction of the Beijing-imposed national security legislation last June.
Schools have been required to incorporate elements of national security education into various subjects at the primary and secondary levels, and to review library collections for material that could potentially breach the law.
Sweeping guidelines issued by the Education Bureau to schools in February suggested children as young as six should learn about the law’s four offences – subversion, secession, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces.
Schools were also told to call police in the event of “grave or emergency” situations relating to student behaviour, such as chantFour or displaying slogans. Beijing has also weighed in, saying Hong Kong schools should highlight patriotic education for young people, while also removing “toxic” teaching materials.
The PTU’s survey, conducted between April 29 and May 5 and published yesterday, found about 40 per cent, or 474, of 1,178 kindergarten, primary and secondary teachers had either already made plans to resign or retire early, or were inclined to do so but had not yet come up with concrete plans.
Fifteen of the 474 educators were primary or secondary principals or vice-principals and 99 were senior teachers, in what the union called an alarming trend.
Of the 474 respondents, 337 cited “increasing political pressure” as their main reason for leaving the education sector, while 183 said “dissatisfaction towards education policies” was another reason to leave.
In the survey, 133 said they had already quit, or decided to do so, by the end of the academic year, while another 85 said they would depart over the next two years.
Among the 704 teachers planning or inclined to stay in their roles, their reasons for doing so included “staying together with family” (58 per cent), “lack of financial capabilities” (53 per cent) and “got used to life in Hong Kong” (44 per cent).
“Many of those who are leaving are more senior teachers with children; they may want to let them grow up in a relatively free environment. But it would not be easy to find people to replace the experience which they had accumulated over the years,” said Fung Wai-wah, president of the pro-democracy union.
Fung also said the recent overhaul of the liberal studies subject to introduce an emphasis on naing tional education, and the deregistration of teachers, were some of the reasons educators felt under increased pressure.
At least three teachers have been deregistered over learning resources, including one who drafted materials touching on local independence and another accused by education officials of “defaming the nation”.
A separate survey by the Hong Kong Association of the Heads of Secondary Schools recently found 37 educators quit and emigrated between July and November last year, compared with 18 over the same period in 2019.
But Wong Wai-shing, vicechairman of the pro-establishment Federation of Education Workers, dismissed concerns of an exodus of educators.
“It is natural that individual teachers have their own personal considerations or are planning for their families, I believe there is no need to panic,” he said.
An Education Bureau spokesman, while stressing that it was “normal” some teachers quit every year for various reasons, said it could not comment on the representativeness and reliability of the PTU’s survey as the total number of respondents was small compared with the more than 70,000 educators in the city.