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2/02/2008

Mother Tongue education failing...!?

On the radio today... turns out the Education Department has been following the progress of students from schools using Chinese as the medium of education and comparing them to ones that attend schools using English as the language medium. That's great... finally someone can prove that mother tongue education is the way to go (I wrote this as my final project for my first college English class... I was very convincing back then).

Instead, the Chinese University commissioned study found that students in Chinese high schools have 50% less chance on getting into Universities! Among the core reasons is all Universities mandate a minimum of "D" score in the English public exam.

Conclusion 1: Chinese schools need to improve in English.
Conclusion 2: Universities have an unreasonable barrier to entry.

Let the consultant go to work: could it be that only the best students get into English schools and therefore have a higher chance of getting into University!? Oh wait... that's how the schools were divided in the first place! Good schools stayed English and bad ones were converted to Chinese to improve the student overall experience in other subjects (as opposed to struggling in every subject taught in English). Of course you'll find a difference in "college conversion"...

Let the consultant go to work again: "D" is a pretty low score for any subject. Universities teach in English. I don't see any unreasonable barriers.

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