71 Hong Kong teachers disqualified in 2024 over criminal offences and misconduct, Education Bureau says
Hong Kong Free Press
Hong Kong’s Education Bureau (EDB) has disqualified 71 teachers last year – the highest number since 2018 – with some cases involving criminal offences like child abuse and “serious professional misconduct.”
The number of teachers who lost their licences in 2024 was 1.5 times higher than in 2023, the previous record year, the EDB revealed in a document submitted to the Legislative Council (LegCo) ahead of a scheduled discussion on Friday this week.
Some of the disqualification cases last year involved offences relating to theft, child abuse and deception, according to the EDB.
Others involved “serious professional misconduct which mainly included going beyond teacher-student relationships and having improper physical contact with students,” it said.
Although most of the individuals concerned had left the teaching profession, the EDB said it would “follow up seriously” to prevent them from teaching in schools again in order to safeguard the well-being of students.
The EDB said it had taken other follow-up action relating to teachers’ professional misconduct last year, including issuing 38 reprimand letters and 149 written warnings.
The EDB reported no cases of teacher deregistration in 2018, while the numbers were in single digits – between three and five cases — from 2019 to 2021. The figure rose to 14 in 2022.
Six teachers were disqualified over complaints linked to the 2019 extradition bill protests, the EDB told LegCo in 2022.
Cases included a teacher found to have “continuously used a large amount of one-sided and biased teaching materials,” and a primary school teacher who gave pupils a factually incorrect account of the Sino-British Opium War.
The rise in the number of disciplinary actions in 2023 and 2024 was mainly due to a criminal record check conducted every three years, the EDB said. The last round of inspection was completed in December 2021, when the authorities reviewed the records of around 160,000 registered teachers.
A new round of examination began last December, the EDB said, adding it may request the court’s assistance if some cases were not reported properly.
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