Review Mother Tongue advantage in streaming and school allocation

I refer to the letter “2-point concession to Higher Mother Tongue students unfair” (Feb 2). It seems that a student weak in Mother Tongue is disadvantaged at every critical milestone — Primary School Leaving Examination, Secondary 3 streaming and entry into junior college.

I recently attended a school briefing on streaming for Secondary 3 level and discovered that language ability affects the allocation of subject combination.

Secondary 2 students will be ranked according to their final average score for all subjects. Higher-ranking students will be allowed to study combinations of their choices while the lower-ranking ones will be given the remaining combinations. This would mean that my son, who excels in Science subjects, may not be able to pursue his interests as his performance for Mother Tongue is below average and he may be ranked lower than other students who perform averagely on all subjects.

I had expected the system to allocate subject combinations to students based on their performance in specific core subjects, be it in Science, Humanities or Arts. This allocation process defeats the purpose of streaming for upper secondary education, which should be based on students’ abilities and building on their interests. It also gives an unfair advantage to students who have an aptitude for language.

I hope the Ministry of Education will review carefully its current basis of deciding on schools and streaming to give students better matches according to their aptitudes.