Culture Tour Overview:
Yan Oi Tong Tin Ka Ping Secondary School was established in 1987, and study tours began to be organized shortly thereafter.
According to unofficial statistics, since 1991 and until the first half of last academic year, our School has planned and organized 39 study tours, all of which entailed direct liaisons with organizations in the Mainland.
At the beginning the study tours were mainly set in Guangdong Province for Civic Education (junior forms) and Chinese History (S3); the former tours revolved around Pearl River Delta economy, and the latter ones, the Opium War.
In 1997, study tours began to venture outside the Guangdong Province, reaching Beijing, Nanjing, Shanghai, Xian, and even Xinjiang, while the target audience also gradually settled upon S3 and S6. The S6 students, 60 in total, are usually split into 2 to 3 tours of 3 to 4 days over various cities in a single province; whereas the 80 S3 students are usually divided into 2 tours over various cities in a single province. In addition, certain ad-hoc visits are also organized.
In recent years, the 3-day study tours for S3 and 7-day tours for S6 have already become regular school events as formally recorded in the school calendar. Assessment records of the students' tour reports are also included in the students' report cards.
Over the years, the success of the School's self-organized Mainland study tours hinges upon the support and assistance from over 200 Tin Ka Ping affiliated secondary schools and various other tertiary institutions in various cities and provinces in the Mainland, so that the teachers-in-charge can directly liaise with local education authorities and units to effect specific arrangements, which include visits to local Tin Ka Ping secondary schools, visits to local students' homes and even homestays, visits to rural homes and schools, and working in farmland, visits to enterprises and interviews with workers, walking around shopping malls and making acquaintances with local citizens so as to experience first-hand the pulse of local societies.
To provide students with clear learning objectives and meaningful content for a short trip, deploying project learning is an obvious choice. During the trip, students are encouraged and guided to observe and interact with people, the environment, deepening the understanding of our country's current developments, social pulses, and the cultural characteristics. Pre-trip data gathering, interim group presentations, followed by rational analysis and emotional sharing sessions, all rolled up into final projects reports, which are shared both inside and outside the School. The culture study tours have in effect become a cross-subject National Education course.
Looking into the future, against the backdrop of a continuously improving transport network between Hong Kong and the Mainland, the implementation of NSS, an integrated 6-year secondary school curriculum, local schools are better positioned than ever to extend teaching beyond classrooms, employing cross-subjects and non-subject models, and to implement project learning through culture studytours.
Through the study tours, the students can further understand the difference between rural and city areas, experience humanity first-hand, seek the roots of our history, and explore the evolution of people's lives and cultures. It is through these experiences that a student's self-awareness is enriched; strengthening the personal bond with ones' own country is no longer a far-fetched dream.