梁紀昌

English

Leung Kee-cheong is the retired principal of Fresh Fish Traders' School. The citation for his honorary fellowship from The Hong Kong Institute of Education in 2015 records that he grew up in a grassroots family; his father died early and, as the eldest son, he worked part-time as a cleaner from Form Two. He remembered his father's instruction that only education could secure a future, studied hard and obtained strong public examination results. Family circumstances meant he first worked for half a year and then asked his mother for a year to prepare before he was admitted to Grantham College of Education. After six years as a primary school teacher he joined the Education Department, serving as an inspector and school development officer for 20 years. In 2000, seeing the resistance to education reform, he decided to return to the front line, and in 2002 he became principal of Fresh Fish Traders' School. The citation records that the school was dilapidated and had only two computers; he repaired the premises and added equipment and teaching aids. Because pupils' homes were cramped, he opened the school after hours and at weekends, returned seven days a week to accompany pupils and supervise homework, and promoted home visits so that teachers understood pupils' backgrounds. He donated one per cent of his monthly salary to help pupils in emergencies and set up a principal's fund using his newspaper column fees to support poor pupils in local and overseas learning activities. Beyond running the school he acted as a social worker and mediator for families, and worked with airlines and the Civil Aviation Department to reward the 100 pupils who read the most with trial flights. When the school faced closure twice because of falling enrolment, he led staff and pupils in campaigns to save it, and it became the only primary school in Hong Kong to survive through a special inspection. Known as 'Principal Father', he was awarded an honorary fellowship by the institute in 2015 as he prepared to retire.