'No Decision Yet' On Anthem Teaching Requirement

Secretary for Education Kevin Yeung said on Friday that the government is studying whether to draft into law a requirement for local schools to teach students about the national anthem.

The government is working on a bill to ban disrespect of the ‘March of the Volunteers’ in line with the national law implemented in the mainland last October, but hasn’t decided yet whether or how to include a teaching requirement.

Yeung told reporters that the government has no set position on the matter, but stressed that it’d be ‘proper and just’ for local Chinese students to learn more about their anthem.

“I think we still need some more time to study and consider what’s the best approach to put that requirement, or how to make sure that the schools will teach the national anthem”, Yeung said. “We will decide that later”, he added, without specifying a timeline.

Yeung added that many primary and secondary schools already teach their students about the background and history of the anthem, so legislating this requirement ‘shouldn’t cause much of a problem.’