The Hong Kong Education System

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In recent years, Hong Kong education system has undergone a great change. In the past, students studied five-year junior secondary education, two-year senior secondary education and three-year tertiary education. Since school year 2009/10, secondary and tertiary education composed of three-year junior secondary education, three-year senior education and four-year tertiary education (3-3-4 Scheme). Apart from the academic structure of education system, new compulsory subjects like Liberal Studies was also introduced to facilitate independent thinking of students. The examples given above showed that the HKSAR government is working hard to change the education system from similar to the British system, to similar to the Chinese system. Given that Hong Kong’s education system changes from time to time, how will the sociologists see from these changes? The following essay is going to discuss the education system of Hong Kong based on the following three sociological perspective: the structural-functional approach, the social-conflict approach and the symbolic-interaction approach.

The first perspective to be discussed is the structural-functional perspective. According to Macionis, structural-functional approach is a framework for building theory that sees society as a complex system whose parts work together to promote solidarity and stability (Macionis, 2011). Education serves as different functions. The first function is to equip citizens with different skills so that they can apply these learnt skills to function as gear of the society. In Hong Kong, students need to learn Chinese, English and Mathematics in primary school. These three subjects serve as basic tools in communication and arithmetic in daily life. When students mov...

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...at people are willing to stay in their own social class and remain a status quo. In the case of Hong Kong, inequality showed in difference of economic capitals spending on education of children, which affects the results of public examinations. Also, schooling inserts hidden curriculums to students. In Hong Kong, hidden curriculums are especially effective due to collectivism of Chinese society that people should obey authority. The excessive pursuit of degrees results in inflation of credentials. Employers can pay less for better employees and affects chances of poor to move upward in the social class hierarchy. Lastly, scholars of symbolic interaction focused on effect of labelling on individuals. The difference expectations from public on EMI students and CMI students serve as an example of the labelling effect that affect the self-fulfilling prophecy of students.

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