Problems Encountered by Schools Switching to Chinese-Medium Instruction

Data concerning problems encountered by the school as a whole is mainly collected in Q.11 of the administrator’s questionnaire. (See Table 4.5.)

	Problem	No	Not much	Quite	Much	Valid cases
11a	Standard of incoming students declining	17.6%	50.4%	28.2%	3.8%	131
11b	Draining away of students with better performance	9.2%	38.2%	41.2%	11.5%	131
11c	Decrease in number of applicants for school place	24.6%	50.0%	21.5%	3.8%	130
11d	Difficulty in recruiting teachers	66.4%	33.6%	0.0%	0.0%	131
11e	Parents object switching to CMI	30.8%	60.8%	7.7%	0.8%	130
11f	Teachers object switching to CMI	34.4%	63.4%	2.3%	0.0%	131
11g	Teachers feel disturbed and worried about switching to CMI	14.5%	72.5%	13.0%	0.0%	131
11h	Other problem	-	-	-	-	13

The three items (11a, 11b and 11c) which a high percentage of schools claim to be a problem are related to quality of student intake. 52.7% of the schools report the problem that their better performing students are withdrawing from the school, while 32% claim that the academic standard of their incoming students is declining. Taken together, the results suggest that parents demonstrate their resistance against CMI schools not by directly exerting pressure on the CMI schools where their children are attending, but by taking them out of CMI schools or avoiding sending them to a CMI school. This is particularly true of parents of more able students. Apparently, CMI becomes a negative factor based on which parents deselect schools. Therefore it seems that some parents regard CMI as a reason not to send their children to a given school.