Exam switch makes teaching more accessible: principal

The principal of Ying Wa College says the switch in proficiency exams for English and Putonghua teachers will make the language teaching profession more accessible, as the exams will be held more frequently. Dion Chen made the comment after the Education Bureau on Wednesday said, that from the next academic year, English and Putonghua teachers would no longer sit for a Language Proficiency Requirement (LPR) test conducted by the government. Instead, the exams will be replaced by the International English Language Testing System, or IELTS, and a national Putonghua proficiency test. "I would say definitely it will give the teacher more chances in obtaining certain qualifications. In the past, the LPR, they would only just do it once a year," Chen said while appearing on RTHK's Hong Kong Today programme. "For IELTS and also for these national tests, they have more than one time a year available in the market." But Chen said the English test run by IELTS would probably be easier to pass than the government's old Language Proficiency Requirement exam. He said this was because the IELTS test purely focused on ability. "The LPR basically requires not just only teachers having a certain standard of the English language but the teachers, through the test, also need to demonstrate they have the ability to identify the mistakes the student made in their work," he said. Chen said this did not apply in the case of the national Putonghua test, which is widely recognised in the teaching sector. The new assessment applies to all new teachers, who have not previously met the current language proficiency requirements with results from the existing tests.