Hong Kong's education chief and industry stakeholders highlighted the importance of early childhood education to cultivate a generation that is ready for the future at a high-level forum on Friday, and identified the city’s high-quality, affordable kindergarten education as a key pull factor for attracting global talent.
With the aim of addressing Hong Kong’s talent gap through establishing strategic early childhood education initiatives, the China Daily Mastermind Roundtable, held at The Peninsula Hong Kong hotel, attracted around 30 principals, educationalists, and leading entrepreneurs from across the city.
Under the theme “Addressing Hong Kong’s Talent Gap Through Strategic Early Childhood Education Initiatives”, the veteran educators discussed and considered pioneering initiatives for early childhood education, and learned about the city’s latest developments in this field, including in areas such as AI technology, parenting methods, fostering innovative thinking, language and Chinese traditional culture learning.
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Secretary for Education Christine Choi Yuk-lin said that the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government has always attached great importance to kindergarten education and has introduced various initiatives in recent years to increase efficiency and to sustain the healthy development of this sector.
Among these initiatives, Choi said that the free quality kindergarten education policy, which began in the 2017-18 school year, is a significant milestone in the city’s development in the area of kindergarten education. Under the new policy, eligible local nonprofitmaking kindergartens joining the program are provided with a basic subsidy for providing a three-year, quality half-day service for all eligible children. More measures have also been introduced to provide good-quality, affordable kindergarten education, while enhancing students’ access to different modes of service that suit their specific needs.
She said she believes that Hong Kong’s high-quality and affordable kindergarten education is a pull factor in attracting global talent to pursue their development in Hong Kong.
Choi mentioned the city’s numerous talent admission programs to attract skilled workers from the Chinese mainland and around the world, with the aim of developing Hong Kong into an international top-talent hub that can contribute to the country’s high-quality development. She said that her bureau is supportive of the programs and provides quality and affordable education to the children of newly arrived talent, with kindergarten education playing an import part in that.
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The education chief said that the children of incoming professionals, under different talent admission programs, are eligible to join the city’s kindergarten education program.
Zhou Li, deputy editor-in-chief of China Daily Group, publisher and editor-in-chief of China Daily Hong Kong (which organized the event), and chairman of the Asia Leadership Roundtable, stressed the important part that early childhood plays in a person’s development, adding that it is a critical period in which cognitive, emotional, and social skills are fostered, and when learning habits that last a lifetime are formed.
As Hong Kong moves to increase its high-caliber talent base, and at a time when an unprecedented wave of technological innovation makes it essential for Hong Kong to nurture local professionals, the aim of the forum was to inject new momentum into the cultivation of a future-ready workforce.
Also joining the panel discussion were David Fong, managing director of Hip Shing Hong (Holdings) Co Ltd; Jenny Chong, head principal of Po Leung Kuk Choi Kai Yau School; Wil Chan, lower school principal of the Canadian International School of Hong Kong; Shaun Porter, principal of the international program at Dalton School Hong Kong; Christine Ma-Lau, founder and principal of the JEMS Character Academy; as well as other recognized education entrepreneurs based in the city.
Lu Wanqing contributed to this story.
