Did deregistered Hong Kong teacher receive the fair hearing he deserved?

The teacher apparently had no chance to respond in person to the complaint about his lesson plan
The Basic Law also does not specifically prohibit teaching about the pro-independence movement, raising questions over the grounds on which he was deregistered

Kerry Kennedy

Published: 8:30am, 14 Oct 2020

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It is clear that the Beijing authorities have Hong Kong schools and teachers in their sight, as the recent case of the deregistered teacher shows. So focused are the chief executive and the Education Bureau on weeding out “bad apples” that issues of process, fairness and professionalism seem to have been forgotten.

It does not help that details of the deregistration case only seeped out little by little. One day it seemed the teacher was deregistered because he was promoting Hong Kong’s independence in his classroom. The next day it was revealed that this teacher was not actually teaching but that he designed the lessons that were taught by other teachers.

At some stage, there was a review of the case by the Education Bureau. The review seems to have been paper-based and the teacher concerned was not interviewed. The final decision on deregistration was made by the permanent secretary for education, with the possibility of review by the chief executive or a formal judicial review. The key question in all of this is whether this is an appropriate way to manage the teaching profession.

The first step should have involved a professional assessment, involving judgment on the quality of the lesson that was designed. The focus of the lessons designed by the deregistered teacher was freedom of speech. The content chosen was related to one aspect of Hong Kong’s pro-independence movement. The materials were designed for a Primary 5 class in a subject area for which there is no formal curriculum.

The actual lesson consisted of students watching a video that featured the banned pro-independence Hong Kong National Party, then answering questions based on the video.

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Irrespective of the content, this is a questionable approach to lesson preparation and development. First, this is a class of 11-year-olds. Freedom of speech could be a suitable topic but the decision to focus on the pro-independence movement is questionable with regard to students of this age.

At the same time, the use of lengthy videos is never a good teaching strategy and worksheets for students encourage lazy and uncritical responses.

Professionally, therefore, the lesson was questionable, including the suitability of the content for students and of the teaching strategies used. Given all these, should the teacher who designed these materials have been deregistered?

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Lack of transparency in the Education Bureau review makes it difficult to answer this question. What seems clear from comments by officials is that the use of material that can be classified as supporting Hong Kong’s independence was at the heart of the issue.

Yet this was not related to the national security law because the lesson was designed and taught before July. The only legal rationale put forward was that teaching about Hong Kong’s independence movement is contrary to the Basic Law, which highlights that Hong Kong is an integral part of China. This assertion, of course, is correct. Yet the Basic Law does not specifically prohibit teaching about Hong Kong’s independence movement.

This raises the serious issue of the grounds on which the teacher was deregistered. It seems clear he did not break any law and there are no Education Bureau regulations related to teaching about independence in Hong Kong schools. Apart from the fact that the teacher has offended officials and designed a questionable lesson, in professional terms, the case for deregistering him rests on very shaky grounds.

There is not enough information in the public domain to know exactly how the permanent secretary for education made the deregistration decision. It can be assumed that a report was prepared, based on school visits by officials and written responses from the teacher involved. But we do not know.

There has been no public scrutiny, no opportunity to ask questions, and no opportunity especially to listen to the teacher who was deregistered. In other words, there was no due process. The Education Bureau investigated the complaint, collected the evidence, decided on the guilty verdict, and imposed the sentence.

Irrespective of what anyone thinks about the issues involved in this case, the processes used are questionable. They are not consistent with the city’s Basic Law or the international rights treaties to which it is a signatory.

Teachers need to be professional in their attitudes to their work, responsible for the well-being of their students, and alert to how they should go about their professional lives in times of public stress. None of this is in dispute. Neither is the prospect of deregistration for unprofessional behaviour – that comes with the territory.

What is in dispute is how to handle teachers’ professional responsibility in a professional, open and transparent way. Or, to put it more simply, how Hong Kong values can be applied to life-determining decisions. This is not the time for ideology and arbitrariness – it is time to do the right thing in the right way.

Kerry Kennedy is professor emeritus and adviser (academic development) at The Education University of Hong Kong

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