Under the impact of COVID-19 for the past two years, a new problem has been affecting the education system, Cheng Hung Kuan, who co-owns a tutorial centre in the central district, told The Macau Post Daily in a recent phone interview.
When asked about the impact on students due to local schools’ suspension of in-class teaching in the wake of the current COVID-19 outbreak, Cheng said that the impact has been around for a long time, at least since the first school suspension in 2021, not only this time, adding that the current COVID-19 outbreak does not have a major impact on students’ results as many of them had finished their final examinations before the outbreak.
Cheng took his students as an example, saying that there are six students out of 10 who have been classified as special needs students by their schools as they have been unable to follow their respective school’s curriculum.
However, he added, according to his observation, the students are actually “normal” and sometimes even obtained “high” grades in their tests and exams, adding that they could not follow their teachers’ learning steps because they had never learnt a whole syllabus that should have been taught in the previous grade, when their classes had been suspended or cancelled owing to COVID-19, Cheng said.
Cheng, who asked that the name of his tutorial centre not be revealed by The Macau Post Daily, also said that some P3 students did not even know the English alphabet, which should be taught in P1. Cheng quoted a student’s father as saying that he thought the school would teach the missed syllabus in the next grade. However, Cheng said, many of the students did not even know what they had learnt in their previous years.
Cheng said he was not blaming the COVID-19 situation or the suspension of the schools, but was worried that schools would not add the missed lessons when the students return to their classrooms, adding that although students could go up one grade in school, they “got nothing” from the previous grade since there was no time for them to “absorb” their knowledge.
Therefore, in order to allow students to study the missed syllabus, Cheng urged the Education and Youth Development Bureau (DSEDJ) to approve half days for students to study during their “summer holidays” at schools.
Due to the current COVID-19 outbreak, the Education and Youth Development Bureau announced last Thursday that kindergartens, primary and secondary schools have been suspended for this academic year, i.e., the “2021/2022 Academic Year” ended earlier than scheduled, while tertiary education institutions have been allowed by the bureau to switch to online teaching for their courses.
This undated file photo shows students crossing the road near Santa Rosa de Lima English Secondary School.
Photo: Maria Cheang Ut Meng
