The “biliterate and trilingual” policy in Hong Kong primary school education

With the handover in 1997, Hong Kong has adopted the ‘Biliterate and Trilingual’ language policy, which aims at developing citizens who are biliterate in both written Chinese and English as well as trilingual in Cantonese, Putonghua, and spoken English. In this chapter, a comprehensive historical review of the development of language education in Hong Kong schools will be given first, followed by a discussion on how the ‘biliterate’ and ‘trilingual’ language policy is currently implemented in Hong Kong primary schools based on findings of an empirical study. Finally, the chapter will conclude by giving some recommendations to policy makers and school administrators to consider when formulating language policies in Hong Kong primary school education. Copyright © 2019 The Author(s).