There is a growing literature including popular media articles reporting many issues about the current education provision for the ethnic minority students in Hong Kong. The Equal Opportunity Commission has also formally noticed Education Bureau of its concerns about the education of ethnic minority students. It especially recognized an issue with reference to the disproportionately low participation rates of ethnic minority children in upper secondary and post-secondary education compared to the majority ethnic Chinese children. This paper uses two important frameworks to focus on the extent of ‘out of school’ ethnic minority children in Hong Kong i.e. ‘Five Dimensions of Exclusion’ by UNICEF and the UNESCO Institute for Statistics and ‘Seven Zones of Exclusion’ by Consortium for Research on Educational Access, Transitions and Equity (CREATE). An analysis of 2006 census data confirms that a good number of ethnic minority children are not within the school; this includes the pre-primary, lower secondary, upper secondary and post-secondary age-group children. This paper concludes with suggestions concerning a research and policy agenda in the area of ethnic minority education in Hong Kong. Copyright © 2013 Comparative Education Society of Hong Kong (CESHK).

In 2013 the newly elected Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) of the People’s Republic of China delivered his first Policy Address. Among other things, it highlighted the issues of education for ethnic minority students in Hong Kong focusing on Chinese language difficulties. This paper reviews the Chinese language issues for ethnic minority students as well as other issues and challenges that have been raised. It draws on education reform documents, available policy documents from the Education Bureau (EDB) and other departments regarding the educational provision for ethnic minorities, the Race Discrimination Ordinance (RDO), census and statistics reports including the recent ‘2011 Population Census, Thematic Report: Ethnic Minorities’, existing literature and newspaper articles. While the focus of the discussion is on the challenges that ethnic minority students are facing inside the school, the issue of the ‘out of school’ or ‘dropout’ phenomenon for such students is also highlighted. The paper concludes by suggesting that an exclusive concern with Chinese language education misses other significant issues that impact on the education of ethnic minority students in Hong Kong. Copyright © 2014 by the CESHK.