Switching to video in remedial lessons to reduce the risk of infection

(Sing Tao Daily) As senior secondary school students will resume classes soon and the summer holidays will start early, many schools will have to redeploy their summer remedial lessons. Some secondary school principals have pointed out that in view of the risk of infection on the way to and from school, remedial lessons will be conducted online, and arrangements will be made for students to return to school if they are required to complete a school-based assessment for individual subjects. For important events to be held during the summer holidays, such as graduation ceremonies and thank-you banquets, the Education Bureau said that they had to follow the guidelines on hygiene and epidemic prevention, and some secondary schools had decided to hold the events in a different format as scheduled, or to postpone the events.

　　Ms Ho Yuk-fun, vice-chairman of the Association of Guidance Teachers and principal of Carmel Alison Lam Foundation Secondary School, said that the school had originally planned to organise a two-week tutorial for senior secondary students during the summer holidays, but decided to do it online instead after the authorities announced the early release of the school holidays. "After the announcement of the early holiday, it was decided that the tutorials would be conducted online instead. "After all, when students travelled to and from the school, they would come into contact with other people on the means of transport, and there would be a certain risk of infection. Mr Lam Tat-ho, Principal of the CNEC Lau Wing Sang Secondary School, also pointed out that according to the school's statistics, there were about 170 students who needed to take remedial lessons, and since there were quite a number of them, experience after the resumption of classes showed that it was not advisable to have too many students interacting socially on campus, and that the remedial lessons would all be conducted online instead.

　　"Originally, 80% of the time was allocated to online tutorials, but now it has been changed to 100%." Mr Lam said that this arrangement was welcomed by students because it could save them the trouble of travelling to and from school. However, for individual subjects such as Visual Arts, students need to return to school to complete their school-based assessment assignments, and the school will also arrange for them to return to school. He also pointed out that for subjects such as Liberal Studies, Mathematics and Accounting, which were not well taught, whole-class remedial lessons would be organised for those classes with slower teaching progress.

　　Regarding the Secretary for Education, Mr Yeung Yun-hung's comment that other activities in schools, such as graduation ceremonies and thank-you banquets, should be handled in accordance with the guidelines if they are held in schools, Dr Ho said that she had already decided to change the graduation ceremonies to online live broadcasting, "Many activities have been cancelled this year but we still want to have graduation ceremonies for our graduating students, and the live broadcasting of the ceremonies has also arranged for the students' representatives to deliver speeches and invited guests, so we hope that our students will still be able to participate in the ceremonies with a limited number of students. Lam Tat-ho, however, said that due to the easing of the epidemic earlier, the graduation ceremony and teacher appreciation banquet for Form 6 students originally planned to be held in the middle of this month had been postponed, and that the ceremony would be held after the start of the new school year, depending on the development of the epidemic. "As this is of great significance to the graduation ceremony, I promise the students that it will not be cancelled.