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Hong Kong schools lost 4,600 pupils in last academic year, a nearly 90% drop compared with 2021-22 as emigration wave subsided

  • Two school council heads say pupil withdrawals have been ‘dying down’, with only a handful leaving in the past 1½ years
  • Post compares enrolment figures of pupils from Kindergarten One to Form Five in September 2022 with those from Kindergarten Two to Form Six at start of this year

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Two Hong Kong school council heads say pupil withdrawals have been ‘dying down’, with only a handful leaving in the past 1½ years. Photo: Dickson Lee

About 4,600 pupils left Hong Kong’s schools in the last academic year, a decrease of nearly 90 per cent compared with the previous one as an emigration wave subsided, according to official figures.

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Two school council heads said pupil withdrawals had been “dying down”, with only a handful leaving in the past 1½ years.

In response to lawmakers’ queries, the Education Bureau on Thursday released the enrolment figures of all government, aided and international schools as well as those under the direct subsidy scheme as of September 2023.

The Post compared the enrolment figures of pupils from Kindergarten One to Form Five in September 2022 with those from Kindergarten Two to Form Six at the start of this academic year to determine the change in population.

The difference of the pupil enrolment between two years was about 4,600, or 0.5 per cent of the total excluding the Form Six students in 2022.

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That was about an 80 per cent decrease when compared with the 33,600 pupils who withdrew in 2021-22 and 30,500 in 2020-21.

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