In the past two years, the education sector has adapted to the ‘new normal’ of online teaching. This requires a reliable IT set up as well as mobile data availability. Teachers, meanwhile, have to be agile and constantly acquire new skills.
  

Pandemic Relief

New challenges for teachers

The prolonged pandemic has reshaped education, with students and teachers having to adapt to online learning. Tso Siu Man, principal at De La Salle Secondary School NT, said that in the past two years, teachers have had to overcome one teaching challenge after another.

Principal Tso recalls that when the first wave of Covid-19 infections hit, the suspension of face-to-face classes and the instant switch to online lessons left his school scrambling to adapt. “Most of our students come from low-income families. They don’t have their own computers,” Principal Tso said. “Luckily we had a few computers for students to use at home. Yet they brought them back almost immediately because they had used up the internet data at home after just two or three days. Although there were computers, we still could not conduct online lessons easily.”

With schools closed during the pandemic, the Club launched the “Jockey Club STARt-up Resource Kits” to help children learn at home.
Tso Siu Man (right), principal at De La Salle Secondary School NT, receives mobile data cards provided by the Club’s Bandwidth Support for E-learning at Home Scheme.
Principal Tso Siu Man says online lessons require a lot of internet data, which is costly for low-income families and hence an area that needs particular support.

Principal Tso said online lessons require a lot of internet data. To solve the problem, The Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust worked with social welfare organisations and four telecommunication providers to launch the Bandwidth Support for E-learning at Home Scheme, supplying mobile data cards to about 100,000 students from low-income families, including students at De La Salle Secondary School NT.

Today, schools have the computers and other essential IT devices that they need. Meanwhile, teachers have accumulated a good deal of online teaching experience.

"In the past two years, I have felt that there is love in the world. The Jockey Club, the business community and NGOs are all helping us from their respective positions," Principal Tso said. However, the protracted pandemic means that students have been unable to go back to school to see their friends and enjoy communal life. Their emotional well-being is worse off because of that. Teachers should pay more attention to the needs of students and offer them stronger support, Principal Tso added.

With school operations again affected in the latest wave of the pandemic, the Club has produced an additional round of the popular “KeySteps@JC Wonder Boxes” and “Jockey Club STARt-up Resource Kits” for kindergarten and primary one students respectively. These interactive items are designed to help children learn at home and enjoy parent-child time.

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