To : Parents with children in - ESF schools;
Discovery College;
Renaissance College;
Kindergartens; and
ESL Sports
Dear Parent ESF Lions Football Incident I am writing to you because there has been a good deal of understandable concern about an incident during a football match organised by ESF Educational Services Limited (ESL), an affiliate company of ESF, which is not subvented, and whose board I chair. The match was an Under-12 game between ESF Lions and Kitchee Escola. A ten-year-old player (we have established that he is ten, not eleven) was videoed making a kick that contacted the head of a Kitchee Escola player. Let me say first very clearly that ESF and ESL deeply regret any injury that was caused to the young Escola player. The Chief Operating Officer of ESL, Ann Pearce, wrote on Monday to the boy’s father and the Head Football Coach has also written to the Chairman of Kitchee Football Club expressing their regret. We accept the disciplinary action that the Hong Kong Development League Association has taken. I understand that the parent of the injured child has referred the matter to the police and we will cooperate fully with any police investigation. However, we are also concerned about the impact on the young ESF Lions player of the very public posting of an edited video on YouTube showing these events. By Tuesday afternoon, only 72 hours after the match, there had been more than 20,000 views. Under the film clip a large number of comments had been posted, making aggressive and threatening remarks about the ESF Lions player and his coach. From Sunday evening ESL had been asking Kitchee Football Club to use their good offices to request the removal of the video. ESL approached the Club because there is no ready central access to YouTube and we did not know the name of the person who had posted the film. As the film clips (now two of them) were still being shown on Tuesday morning and the number of views and comments was growing, ESL asked its lawyer to write to the parent who we believed had posted one of the clips and the Kitchee Football Club Chairman to press our request for the removal of the film clips. The lawyer’s letter makes clear our concern about the injury to the Kitchee Football Club child and is designed solely to get the video clips closed down because of the distress that the offensive comments were causing to the ESF Lions player and his family. We have also commented about our disappointment that the Hong Kong Development League released its findings to journalists, from whom we learnt of them, before making them known to the ESF Lions player, his family, the coach or ESL and without an explanation of what the ‘disciplinary action’ would constitute. I am very sorry indeed that parents have been distressed by this incident and I repeat my own deep regret that a child who played for the Kitchee Escola team was injured. All of the adults involved in physical sporting activities, managers, coaches, referees, spectators and parents, have a responsibility to teach children fair and responsible sporting behaviour and ESL is committed to the highest standards in that respect. Appropriate action will be taken to deal with this incident, but, as we do that, we have also to ensure that criticism of a ten-year-old who made a serious mistake does not get out of hand. I ask for your support in allowing us to manage the follow-up to this matter in a firm and appropriate way but out of the spotlight of the social media which is too harsh an environment for a child to be exposed to.
Yours sincerely,
Heather Du Quesnay
Chief Executive Officer, English Schools Foundation
Chairman, Board of Directors, ESF Educational Services Limited
cc : ESF Board of Governors
Committee of School Council Chairmen
Principals
ESF Senior Management Team
ESF Education Team
Ann Pearce, Chief Operating Officer, ESF Educational Services Ltd
All Staff – ESF and ESL
| 
發表於 12-3-15 10:52
