Hong Kong primary school pupils may not need to sit written tests, exams in new humanities subject, education minister says

Hong Kong primary school pupils may not need to sit written tests and exams to be assessed for a new humanities curriculum designed to boost patriotism, the education minister has said.

Secretary for Education Christine Choi Yuk-lin on Saturday said the government was considering a proposal by the school sector to test pupils’ understanding of the subject through other means, with options to let students take part in quizzes and draw pictures among those being discussed.

“We should not use written assessment to gauge what students have learned,” Choi said on a radio programme. “We hope to use lively and diversified teaching approaches. Teachers can observe students’ performance by assessing whether they understand the issue through discussions or even the look in their eyes.”

She suggested that teachers could assess pupils by running question and answer sessions, hosting quizzes and competitions, and even having students draw pictures on a topic to assess their knowledge.

The primary school humanities subject, alongside a new science course, will replace general studies, which was launched in 1996, and puts significant focus on patriotic education from the 2025-26 academic year. The two subjects will each have two to three lessons every week.

Pupils will be required to learn about the country’s achievements under the Chinese Communist Party and the national security law in the compulsory subject. Among the different year levels, Primary One pupils will be taught to love the nation and learn that “without a country, there is no family”.

Education Bureau officials said the curriculum was largely based on general studies, but it would be enriched with elements of Chinese culture, history and geography to bolster patriotic education.

Secretary for Education Christine Choi speaks at a press conference last month. She says teachers should prepare thoroughly for the new course. Photo: Yik Yeung-man

The number of lessons allocated to learning about the country will account for about 25 per cent of the subject’s classes across the six years of primary school education, according to a calculation by the Post.

One of the designers of the course on Friday said new materials on national security and fresh elements about China would form about 10 per cent of the subject.

The school sector said the new curriculum was cumbersome as it only extracted all the related elements to form the new science subject, and added all the national education topics into humanities without condensing repetitive parts, with representatives worrying that teachers would only read aloud from textbooks.

Choi urged teachers to learn the whole curriculum thoroughly before beginning, and be well prepared for lessons.

“I was also a teacher,” she said. “If you do not have time to prepare the lessons beforehand and seriously plan how to teach, the fastest way to get the job done is to read out from the books.”

Choi said educators should explain to students the concept of “security” when teaching national security law but not only focusing on the legislation, as the concept involved food, the online world and transport.

She said the bureau had offered many places to train educators to teach the new subject.

“We [teachers] cannot use the knowledge we learned in universities to teach our students and the current topics,” she said. “Teachers should be able to ride with the times to lead students to learn.”

The bureau earlier said it would offer 4,000 training places for educators teaching humanities every year and those responsible for the new science subject would receive 30 hours of instruction.