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schools meeting requirements may, with Education Departments ‘s agreement, use English as MOI for some subjects. a At sixth-form levels, schools may choose the MOI which best meets the needs of their students. b For the subjects of religious studies, cultural, commercial and technical subjects, individual schools may choose the MOI which best meets their circumstances. c
After two rounds of applications and assessments, about a quarter of secondary schools (114 schools) were granted the right to use English as the medium of instruction; the other three quarters of secondary schools were required to adopt Chinese as the medium of instruction.26
At the same time, concern for teacher skills in English was high in wider Hong Kong society. Therefore, as part of the teacher professionalization drive in its Year 2000 reforms, the Education Department mandated certification for its English teachers, whereby all existing and new English teachers had to sit an exam, within a six-year period, which would qualify them to teach English. Against a backdrop of teacher concerns about job losses due to the shrinking Hong Kong student population, as well as fears that this certification process was just the first step towards making English the medium of instruction, the teacher unions protested strongly against the mandate. For the first time in Hong Kong’s history, teachers took to the streets in protest. At this point, the Hong Kong government introduced a new tactic, giving parents and employers a voice in the debate; both groups strongly advocated English certification. The Education Bureau stood firm in its mandate, and English teaching certification proceeded apace. Singapore, in contrast, mandated its decision about the language of instruction top-down. Language has always been an important issue in Singapore. From the early days of Singapore’s self-government in 1959, its schools taught in the four official languages (Chinese, Malay, Tamil, and English), all of which had equal status in order to facilitate its objective of building a cohesive, multi-racial society. Parents chose the language of instruction for their child’s
education; in addition, every student was required to learn a second language. In 1966, the government moved to mandate bilingualism; all students were required to study English, either as the first or second language, as well as their mother tongue, from primary school onwards. By 1969, 60 percent of all students were enrolled in English streams, 33 percent in Chinese, 6 percent in Malay, and 1 percent in Tamil.27 At the time, the government viewed its 1966 bilingual policy as the cornerstone of Singapore’s economic and social prosperity. Looking back at this decision, the then Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew noted, “If we were monolingual in our mother tongues, we would not make a living. Becoming monolingual in English would have been a setback. We would have lost our cultural identity, that quiet confidence about ourselves and our place in the world.”28 Singapore’s first Cabinet held a strong belief that the future of science and technology would be written in English and so its students therefore needed to be adept in the English language from an early age. In 1978, the Goh report found that Singapore’s bilingualism policy had not been “universally effective.” Less than 40 percent of the student population had achieved the minimum competency level in two languages. The Goh report proposed streaming student by competency level from Primary 4 onwards; as part of this reform, the weaker students who struggled in learning two languages would focus on only one language (English), while students who excelled in two could choose a third language in addition to English and their mother tongue. In 1983, the government mandate moved one step further, announcing that English would be the medium of instruction from 1987 onwards in all subjects, except the mother tongue, from Primary 1 onwards. This policy was consistent with the reality on the ground of declining student enrollment in Chinese, Tamil, and Malay schools, as the majority of parents saw English as offering the greatest employment opportunities for their children. At the time, the magnitude of the challenge facing the school system in making this switch was immense, as few families spoke English among themselves: in 1990, just 18 percent of student