General Studies Is Gone. Here's What Your Primary Child Is Now Studying Instead.

By Wong Sir · 15 October 2025 · 5 min read

If your child is in primary school right now and you haven't heard about this yet, let me save you the confusion the next time your child mentions "Humanities" or "Science" in a way that sounds unfamiliar.

General Studies — the single integrated subject that primary students have had since 2002 — has been replaced. Starting from the 2025-26 school year, it has been split into two separate subjects: Humanities and Science. This is the most significant structural change to Hong Kong's primary curriculum in over two decades, and plenty of parents I speak with still don't fully understand what it means for their children.

Let me break it down.

What Was General Studies, and Why Was It Replaced?

General Studies was a deliberately broad subject. It covered personal health, family and social life, community and civic participation, the natural world, physical science basics, technology, and China and world knowledge — all woven together into a single integrated curriculum. The intent was coherent: in the early primary years especially, children don't experience the world in subject silos, and integrated learning was meant to reflect that.

The criticism, over years, was that it was too broad and too thin. A child could move through GS and touch every topic without going deep into any of them. Science content, in particular, was treated lightly — squeezed between civic education and family values units. There was also a practical tension: as national education content expanded in the later years of the curriculum, the single integrated framework became harder to navigate.

The split resolves some of those tensions. Whether it introduces new ones is what I want to be honest with you about.

What's in the New Humanities Subject

Humanities covers the social and civic dimensions of what GS used to do, but with a significantly expanded scope of civic and national content.

Children will study:

• Personal and family life — similar in spirit to the old GS content on growing up, relationships, and wellbeing
• Community and social life — Hong Kong as a community, civic responsibilities, public institutions
• Chinese history and culture — Chinese civilisation, traditional culture, the history of Hong Kong's development
• National education content — this is where the expansion is most notable. The new Humanities curriculum includes the Basic Law, the National Security Law at an age-appropriate level, the role of the PLA garrison in Hong Kong, and national defence basics

I'm not going to make political commentary on the national content — that's not what this piece is for. What I will say from a practical and pedagogical standpoint is this: the content is there, it will be assessed, and families should understand that it forms a meaningful portion of what their children will be examined on in Primary 6. Students who arrive at secondary school with solid Humanities foundations will be better placed for the civic and national content that runs through Liberal Studies' replacement subject (Citizenship and Social Development, or CSD) from S4 onwards.

If you're supporting a primary child at home, the Humanities subject requires exactly what you'd expect from a humanities curriculum: reading, discussion, understanding ideas in context. It is not a subject you can prepare for entirely through drills.

What's in the New Science Subject

This is the part that I genuinely think is a positive development.

The new Science curriculum gives primary children a dedicated, substantial science learning track for the first time. It covers:

• Life sciences — living things, plants, animals, the human body, ecosystems
• Physical sciences — materials, forces, light, sound, electricity, basic energy concepts
• Earth and space — weather, the natural environment, the solar system
• Scientific inquiry skills — observation, hypothesis, investigation, evidence-based reasoning

This last point matters more than anything on the content list. The old GS science content taught facts. The new Science curriculum is explicitly designed to build scientific thinking — the habit of asking "how do I know?" and "what would change my view?" Those are cognitive skills, and they transfer.

For children who will go on to take science electives at HKDSE, having a proper primary science foundation is not nothing. It won't make or break their secondary choices, but it gives them real grounding rather than starting from scratch.

My Honest Read: Is This Good for Primary Children?

Here is where I want to give you the straight answer rather than the official one.

The additional depth in each subject is real, and on balance I think it's valuable. A serious primary science curriculum is something Hong Kong needed. Humanities content that connects to secondary citizenship education creates useful continuity.

But the split also creates additional load. Two separate subjects means two separate assessment frameworks, two sets of vocabulary and concepts to master, two distinct teachers in many schools. For children who were already stretched under the single GS framework, the transition is not easier — it's more demanding.

P4 and P5 years in particular will feel the change most sharply. These are the years when children are also managing the expansion of Chinese and English curriculum requirements, and adding two distinct social-scientific subjects with their own formal assessment is a real increase in cognitive demand.

What Parents Can Do to Support the Transition

First, don't panic. Most children will adapt to the new subjects within a term if they're given consistent support.

For Humanities: have conversations. The subject is built around ideas, contexts, and understanding. Ask your child what they learned about. If they mention something about community governance or national institutions, follow up with curiosity rather than anxiety — understanding the context for what they're learning helps it stick.

For Science: let children observe things. Go outdoors. Visit a science museum. Let them ask questions about how things work and sit with not immediately knowing the answer. The scientific habit of mind is built in daily moments, not tutorial sessions.

For the transition overall: if your child's school is still finding its feet with the new curriculum — and many are, because the textbooks and assessments are still being refined — don't over-respond by piling on supplementary material. Give it time, watch for specific gaps, and address those specifically rather than trying to cover everything.

The curriculum has changed. The fundamentals of how children learn have not.