'Kindergartens Segregate Ethnic Minority Kids'

A minority rights group said on Thursday that it has found that some kindergartens are separating ethnic minority children from Chinese-speaking students despite government guidelines advising against this.

Unison’s executive director Phyllis Cheung said the government should make sure kindergartens receiving extra subsidies to help non-Chinese speaking children are effective in integrating students of different races and teaching them Chinese.

Cheung said the authorities should include the effectiveness of support services provided for ethnic minorities in its quality review of kindergartens.

“Age 3 to 6 is the golden age to learn a language. So if they can help them learn this language, build a good foundation, then they can really integrate,” she told RTHK's Joanne Wong.

“But what we see in this situation is they would put them in separate classes … not only do they not teach them Chinese, they can never integrate back into the whole class, and this is a big problem that we see,” she said.