The report also found that only about thirty percent of Hong Kong
secondary school students were deriving any
benefit from the English medium instruction and proposed that primary school students be assessed for language
ability and streamed into Chinese or English
medium secondary schools based on these assessments.
In September 1997, the Hong Kong government for the first time firmly
advised all local public sector secondary
schools to adopt Chinese as the medium of instruction, starting with their Secondary 1 intake in the 1998-99
school year and progressing each
year to a higher level of secondary education.
(At Secondary 4 of the Chinese medium school, the medium of instruction can be changed
to English at the discretion of the
school authorities.) Only schools
satisfying certain criteria regarding
students' language ability, teacher capability and support services were allowed to use, or continue to use, English as the medium
of instruction.
In the end, only about thirty percent of the
secondary school students with the best scores could study in the schools with English as the medium of
instruction. To help them choose secondary schools most suited to their children's
language ability, parents were informed of
their children's grouping and the medium of instruction adopted by individual schools.