Online Teaching During COVID-19: A Tale of Two Cities

Covid-19 School Suspension In Hong Kong And The Philippines

Hong Kong’s experience with the COVID-19 pandemic first started in early 2020, as the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 to be a global pandemic. The government imposed restrictions on crowd gathering and businesses were ordered to close, including beauty parlors, sports facilities, entertainment, and recreation venues (Lee et al., 2021). Schools were also ordered to close during the spring term and employ online learning; they shifted to half-day in-person sessions in the summer term but closed again due to a third wave in July 2020 in Hong Kong. Schools reopened after the summer break in September 2020 with half-day sessions and closed again in early December 2020 due to a fourth wave. They reopened in February 2021 with half-day sessions. Unfortunately, the fifth wave started in early January 2022, which led to yet another school suspension lasting until early May. Schools then resumed half-day face-to-face teaching. In cases where a school reached a 90% vaccination rate, full-day mode could be resumed. Rather unexpectedly, however, students were allowed to go back to full-day classes in February 2023 irrespective of vaccination rate. This was soon followed by the cancellation of the mask mandate. This was soon followed by the repeal of the daily rapid antigen testing in schools, as Hong Kong lifted the last of its COVID restrictions in March 2023.

During the pandemic, even though the Education Bureau of Hong Kong only encouraged using online platforms as a way to deliver ERT, most primary and secondary schools in the city decided to continue online teaching in one way or another (Lau & Lee, 2021). While the vast majority of Hong Kong schools are equipped with a high-quality IT infrastructure on their premises as well as mobile learning devices they could loan to students (Lam, 2019), the same cannot be said beyond the classroom among low-income families who lack access to a high-speed internet connection at home (Yu, 2017). In fact, this has proven to be the biggest hurdle experienced by students (Ng et al., 2020).