Video for remedial lessons reduces risk of epidemic (Sing Tao Daily)

1/1 Kindergarten students resumed schooling for only one month, but they had to take a break from school life again.

 

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

 

(Sing Tao Daily) As senior secondary school students resume classes soon and the summer holidays start early, many schools have to redeploy their summer holiday tutorials. Some secondary school principals said 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 organise the events in a different format as scheduled, or postpone them.

 

Ho Yuk-fun, vice-chairman of the Association of Guidance Teachers and principal of Carmel Alison Lam Foundation Secondary School, said the school originally planned to organise a two-week remedial lesson for senior secondary students during the summer holidays, but decided to organise it online instead after the authorities announced the early release of the school holidays. "After all, when students travel to and from school, they will come into contact with other people on public transport, and there is a certain risk of catching the disease." 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 the number of students was quite large, according to the experience gained after the resumption of classes, it was not advisable for too many students to interact socially on campus, and all the remedial lessons were to be conducted on the Internet 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 are not well taught, whole-class remedial lessons will be organised for those classes with slower teaching progress.

 

In response to the Secretary for Education, Mr Yeung Yun-hung, who said that other activities in schools, such as graduation ceremonies and thank-you banquets, should follow the guidelines if they were to be held in schools, Dr Ho said that she had decided to change the graduation ceremonies to a live webcast, "Many activities have been cancelled this year but we still want to have graduation ceremonies for our graduating students. The live broadcast 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 said, due to the easing of the epidemic earlier, the original plan to hold the graduation ceremony and thank you banquet for Form 6 students in the middle of this month, but has now decided to postpone it, depending on the development of the epidemic or will be held after the start of the new school year, "because this is a significant graduation ceremony, I promise to the students will not be cancelled.