Hong Kong’s Education Bureau (EDB) is feeling the heat over the mysterious death of a mother and her 15-year-old son earlier this month, after it was learned the teenager had not attended school in the past five years.
Yik Shun-mui, 48, and her son Leung Man-lai had been dead for at least three weeks when they were found inside their flat in Shan King Estate, a public housing complex in Tuen Mun district on September 7. The discovery only came after residents complained of an odor emanating from the 13th floor unit.
In a special Legislative Council meeting called yesterday, the EDB told lawmakers it had first established a case file for the boy in 2011 after learning he had rarely been in school.
But So Yuen-yee, principal assistant secretary for school development, said that the bureau had stopped following up on the situation in 2012 after failing to locate the child over the course of several visits to Shan King Estate, Apple Daily reports.
EDB guidelines state that if a parent does not have a valid reason for not letting their child to go to school, the bureau can issue an attendance order requesting they bring their child back to school.
No such order was ever issued, So said, citing the fact that EDB had never possessed an accurate unit number for the family.
The assistant secretary told legislators that EDB has a 21 inspector-strong unit in charge of truancy issues. The team, following the guidelines amended in 2013, is expected to approach the city’s Housing Authority for address information if an absent student lives in a public housing estate, online outlet on.cc reports.
In this case, the bureau never attempted to contact the Housing Authority and could have done better, So admitted.
The explanation didn’t sit well with legislator Aron Kwok Wai-keung, who failed to see why finding the address had proved difficult.
“How did he manage to register in the school in the first place if he did not provide the residential address?” he asked in the meeting.
Lawmaker Fernando Cheung Chiu-hung said the bureau had abdicated its responsibility by not trying harder to determine the reasons behind students’ absences from school.
While So was able to tell the Council there had been about 3,600 cases of students missing school for periods of at least seven days in the 2015-16 school year, the bureau does not keep detailed statistics about the absences, including the reasons for students skipping the schools.
That’s a fact Cheung said needs to change, and we’re inclined to agree.
