I am writing to you to seek your help in sharing my letter and urge the Education Bureau to come up with a definitive plan to reopen primary and secondary schools of Hong Kong in a Covid 19 era.

Online school is not fair on children and families, is not sustainable and will never be a real long-term solution. Children in Hong Kong have been absent from school since January 2020. This abrupt and ill-planned transition to online learning will never compensate for the classroom experience. It is unfair to expect young children and teenagers to manage a full curriculum online independently.

Amongst younger children it is creating an undesirable high level of addiction to technology. The issue of the dangers of screen time was a hot topic prior to the pandemic that now seems to be forgotten by the Education Bureau. Full time working parents must rely on either helpers or extended family, and this burden is too much. Even parents can barely manage to juggle multiple children’s schedules at once, it is unfair to expect others in a household to step in as educators.

For most families in Hong Kong, even a resource such as quiet space for privacy and concentration is limited, and now in addition suddenly each child is not only expected to have their own quiet space for online school sessions but also their own computer, complete with stable internet connection and to be expected to be technically proficient to log into online sessions and handle any technical hiccups. It's very difficult to get any 5- or 6-year-old to sit down and engage in a lesson without hands-on material when they're not assisted by an adult that can connect with them and guide them through different subject lessons. Children need a high level of consistency that comes from an organised timetable, structured routines, and physical activity, without which they are lost and restless.

Screen learning robs both teachers and students of the ability to properly interact with each other, and the crucial interaction between students themselves is also completely removed from the online experience. This is so damaging to the process of education.

While development in online school can promote mass learning on a basic level, this is not what children need, nor indeed what we have been and still are paying for at international schools. We are indeed in completely uncharted territory with what's being asked of school systems but parents will never support the lack of a plan to reinstate what indeed children need, a school to go to where they can grow, learn and be their own person, among their peers and with their teachers.

While the financial resources of public schools might be limited, international schools have more than enough time and resources to plan for a real return to school. Surely some of the money from non-refundable debentures collected throughout the years could be used to re-design and alter school premises to conform to safe restrictions (touchless doors, sanitisers, distanced desks in classroom spaces, etc). Local jobs could be created for a Hygiene Team that will allow classrooms to be disinfected every hour, to redesign the classroom space by maintaining safety and social distancing. For example, in Hong Kong, Victoria Educational kindergarten in Causeway Bay redesigned their class experience beautifully, and in both Singapore and Malaysia international schools have successfully re-opened with social-distancing measures.

The increased dependency on gadgets among adults and children amid the lockdown and the related impact on mental health has been pointed out by many organisations including UNICEF. Whilst we all are trying our best to tackle this new reality, the feeling is that the Education Bureau of Hong Kong is not encouraging schools to make the necessary steps to welcome our kids back to school. And international schools need to step up to do this. Both parents and kids want the schools opened. There are plenty of ways to accommodate for a safe environment with the collaboration of everyone, it really just needs to be planned properly. If there are acceptable health and safety standards that restaurants conform to, why can’t there be similar ones for schools?

What has become a default plan of closing schools every time there is a resurgence of Covid -19 cases in an era where the virus is likely to linger is not the solution. It is unacceptable and hugely detrimental to our children’s education and future.

We ask that you work on a plan and timeline to open primary and secondary schools, with the commitment to ensure acceptable and well thought out standards of safety, for the benefit of the children of Hong Kong!

Thank you for your time and support!