The government official said that school heads could be disqualified if deemed unsuitable while handling 'protest-related complaints' against teachers
Kevin Yeung Yun-hung, Secretary for Education, holds a press conference at the Central Government Offices in Tamar.Principals felt pressured by the Hong Kong education chief’s remarks that they could lose their jobs over their handling of protest-related complaints, the school heads’ association said on Monday.
According to the Hong Kong Association of the Heads of Secondary Schools, principals were under pressure after Secretary for Education Kevin Yeung Yun-hung said on Saturday that school heads could be disqualified if they were deemed unsuitable for their job when handling protest-related misconduct complaints against teachers.
The association also accused Yeung of failing to spell out what “unsuitable” meant, and urged his bureau to have trust in principals’ professionalism.
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Yeung made the comment in an interview with online news outlet Shanghai Observer, run by the Chinese Communist Party newspaper Jiefang Daily, on the ongoing anti-government protests.
When asked how his bureau would act if schools or their heads did not cooperate when probing protest-related complaints against teachers, Yeung said the permanent secretary for education had the power to disqualify principals who were not up to their job.
Under the Education Ordinance, the permanent secretary may withdraw a principal’s appointment approval for failure to perform duties satisfactorily, or for being unacceptable to most of a school’s managers. “For example, when a school tells us [during] feedback that the teacher involved is ‘not problematic’, then we might know the school or the principal’s attitude might be ‘problematic’, so we can handle the issue from a management perspective,” he said.
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Yeung said the Education Bureau could appoint members to a school’s management committee but this power would be used cautiously.
“In serious cases, if [a principal] is deemed unsuitable, the bureau can even revoke his or her teaching qualifications,” he said.
The bureau said about 80 teachers and teaching assistants had been arrested over the protests, while at least four were suspended or had resigned.