TSA in Hong Kong

Do you know that in order to improve the effectiveness of learning and teaching in Hong Kong, students of Primary 3, Primary 6 and Secondary 3 have to attend a test called “Territory-wide System Assessment” (TSA)?

The assessment was first introduced in 2004, administered by the Education Bureau. It is compulsory for government-subsidized school (unless students have been proven to have intellectual disabilities) and aims at collecting data about students’ learning capability so that education policies can be reviewed.

So in other words, the test is not meant for the students, but the schools in Hong Kong (and the Education Bureau itself). The assessment itself is not wrong, but the problem lies in how the school prepare for the assessment.

While the assessment tests originally tries to measure students’ learning competence and students don’t have to intentionally study for them (to test their general understanding and use of knowledge), lots of schools are afraid that they would get a poor ranking and reputation if the students’ results are bad. Consequently, the schools forced the students to take drills and mock tests for the assessment, which put a lot of unnecessary pressure on the students, especially those of Primary 3 (who are only 9 – 10 year old).

This, of course, makes the parents angry and they demanded cancelling TSA for Primary 3 students, while at the same time reviewing the overall capability of it (they even formed a “TSA Concern Group” on facebook with over 47k people joining). Then our useless as ever government respond with changing the assessment format and making the tests shorter. But the parents felt insulted by this brush-off attitude and refused to accept the assessment until they are allowed to opt out of it. And the debate / struggle / conflict continues…

Forcing students to memorize model answers, asking students to take tests so that the Education Bureau can know “what to do next”…How are these going to help them?  Seriously, education (especially in Hong Kong) is never fun to begin with, why make the students suffer more because of this bureaucratic nonsense?