Helping underprivileged students enhance English proficiency and develop a global vision through the guidance of the programme’s fellows

Teach for Hong Kong Foundation Limited has run the Teach for Hong Kong (TFHK) Fellowship Programme since 2015. TFHK recruits outstanding university graduates as fellows to serve as full-time teachers in schools with underprivileged students. It also nurtures fellows to be future leaders who will be inspired to bring systemic changes to Hong Kong’s education system through their different careers in future. SIE Fund provided a grant to support the start-up project in 2016.

The project team noticed that the English foundation of underprivileged students was relatively weak due to low learning motivation and inadequate academic support. Besides, grassroots families may not be able to provide opportunities for global exposure to their children. Leveraging the success of the above-mentioned start-up project, the team proposes, to carve from TFHK Fellowship Programme, a specialised and focused programme to address the issue of lower English proficiency and lack of global exposure of underprivileged students. Trained fellows who are promising graduates with an overseas/multicultural background will be placed as full-time teachers at primary/secondary schools serving underprivileged students.

The programme will provide pre-placement training and regular professional development training on teaching skills to fellows throughout the one-year fellowship. Trained fellows will deliver in-class subject lessons, predominantly in English, and lead English-focused extracurricular activities to stimulate students’ motivation in learning English.