How Middle-Class Parents Help their Children Obtain an Advantaged Qualification: A Study of Strategies of Teachers and Managers for their Children's Education in Hong Kong before the 1997 Handover

It is well-documented for most industrial-capitalist societies that despiteeducational expansion, class differentials in educational attainment persist.This paper seeks to understand mechanisms maintaining the class differentials byexamining how two groups of middle-class parents – teachers and managers – helptheir children obtain an advantaged qualification. Qualitative data werecollected in Hong Kong between 1996 and 1997. Given a changing employmentstructure, teachers and managers anticipated that their children would need atleast a bachelor's degree in order not to become disadvantaged in the futurelabour market and therefore used economic, cultural, and social resources toenable their children to obtain such a qualification. However, despite theirstrategies, whether respondents will succeed in achieving that remainsuncertain. In addition, the evidence also indicated that their strategies couldbe counter-productive. This points to a need for researching into possiblenegative impacts of strategies of middle-class parents on their children'sacademic performance and emotion. As Hong Kong is then under the Chinese ruleafter the 1997 handover, this study documenting strategies of middle-classparents for their children's education under the British rule could serve as areference for future comparisons.