Poor schoolchildren shut out of the Web

Needy students who don't own computers are finding it tough to do their homework



For more than two years, while other children played in the schoolyard at break time, Ching has been lining up outside a computer room with 30 or 40 poor children.
They wait to use the internet to do their homework. Sometimes the break ends before Ching has had her turn. "Often after I type in the password and go to the internet, the bell rings," the Primary Three pupil says.


Back at her Mong Kok home, her mother Fung Hin-mei, 38, calls the public library each day to book a computer for her daughter.


When Ching returns home, she quickly finishes her hardcopy assignments, then hurries with her mother to the library to do her online homework. In the one-hour limit she does English, Chinese and mathematics, and searches for information.


"Sometimes I forget to make a booking and we have to wait for an hour to get back-up places," says Fung, a single mother.


Ching has even resorted to using a computer at a mall which allows limited access.


She is one of an estimated 12,560 poor children, aged six to 14, struggling to do their homework because their families cannot afford to pay internet fees. For every 100 children from low-income families, seven to eight have no internet access, according to government research by the Department of Social Work and Social Administration at the University of Hong Kong.


The Hong Kong Council of Social Service (HKCSS) says 157,000 children, aged six to 14, live in poverty.


For most children, using the internet to do homework is a normal part of life. But for poor children it is a daily struggle.


"Each day they line up for school computers, or rush after school to community centres, libraries, or shopping malls, to use the computer to do homework," says Au Yeung Tat-chor, an organiser at the Concerning CSSA Review Alliance (CCRA).


Social workers and academics say homework announcements and submissions of the work, as well as information searches over the internet, have become routine at all schools. Au Yeung says some children who cannot do online assignments have marks deducted while others have their conduct's marks cut.


While poor children can get second-hand computers from social projects they receive no help to get online. Social workers want the Education Bureau to provide free internet for poor children, arguing that the lack of such availability means the children are deprived a basic right to study. "It is a violation of children's rights," says Peace Wong Wo-ping, a policy research and advocacy officer at the HKCSS.


Wong Hung, an associate professor in the department of social work at Chinese University, says that in an information society students who have no access to the internet are being deprived of basic facilities.


Wong is worried that if the government does not help the problem will make poor children less competitive and contribute to cross-generational poverty. He says suggestions by the government that such children can use computers in public libraries and community and youth centres are "not viable".


In his policy address last year, Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen pledged to help students with digital learning. Initiatives are expected to be announced in the budget this month.


Peace Wong says: "We expect that the budget will create some kind of co-operation with an internet service provider to ask them to provide discounts to poor children. It will be short term and have quotas."


The CCRA is organising a march by 200 poor children and their parents in Central today to raise awareness of the problem.


Au Yeung says many of the poor families he has helped have to cut costs in other areas, such as food, to pay for internet connection.


Fung, who gets HK$3,700 a month in welfare payments, eats cheap food to save money. She says she has no way to cut her expenses.


Ching says internet assignments account for a third of her homework but she is often unable to submit them. She says her academic results have suffered because internet homework is taken into account.


Things are even worse for Wong Tin-yau and his twin brother Tin-lok, eight. They do not have a computer. Their mother, Lau Iu-sin, 36, says the public library is a 45-minute walk from their Kwai Chung Estate home, so she can hardly take her boys there.


For a mother who earns HK$960 a month as a part-time market stall cleaner, the internet seems a luxury. Her husband Wong Tak-kuen, 59, is an iron-bender. He earned HK$5,000 last month but is often out of work.


Lau, who came to Hong Kong in 2008, is not eligible for welfare.


The HKCSS, CCRA and Wong Hung have called for the Education Bureau to cover internet fees for poor families.


An Education Bureau spokesman said they put a lot of resources into helping the needy. "An annual subsidy is provided to schools to put in place computer rooms and facilities for use of needy students."


There is also a programme to give a recycled computer and a one-year free internet line for children of welfare recipients and those getting school textbook assistance. But social workers say this is a short-term programme offering 20,000 places and cannot solve the problem.


Both Fung and Lau worry that their children will be left behind. "I am worried that they will be poor when they grow up and our poverty will be passed to the next generation," Lau says bitterly.


SCMP. Feb 7, 2010.