school level. This typifies the sort of
narrow educational criteria that many
experts suggest it’s time to move away
from!
Hong Kong-based Foong Kwin
Tan is an early education expert
and author of
Cool Stuff Your Parents
Never Told You About Parenting
. She
is an advocate for play- and child-
centred curricula as a means for a
holistic development. “I don’t have
a problem with tests and assessment,
but testing needs to be looked at: why
and how they are carried out? If it
is a verbal interview, some children
will not express themselves,” she says.
In that case, the test would be an
unfair reflection of a child’s abilities.
If testing as a tool is abused, or an
assessment tool is poorly developed,
it won’t be very effective in assessing
different abilities.
Signs of change
It’s not all doom and gloom; there are
some truly inspiring creative classes
available in Hong Kong.
The Kelly Yang Project is an
after-school writing programme for
students aged two to 17. Through
creative writing-based projects, the
school inspires students to become
creative thinkers, exceptional writers
and confident speakers. Founder
Kelly Yang and head teacher Andrew
Ongchin enthuse over a recent project
they led a group of students through
based on Mrs Field’s Cookies. The
group looked at the problems Mrs
Field’s Cookies may be facing based
on the current health revolution and
decided to create a new chocolate
chip cookie they would sell outside
the Hong Kong Library. “The kids
looked at marketing aspects, made
posters and put updates on their
social media sites. We had to figure
out the cost of ingredients and they
were so excited to make a profit of
about $1 per cookie,” says Kelly. “We
were using maths, and trying to do it
all in a real world, innovative way.”
Andrew adds, “Maths and science
have a place, but there is a formula;
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