- Schools to take part in promotional session in Shenzhen later next week, leading sector body says
- Facing shrinking pupil population at home, schools hope to convince pupils with Hong Kong permanent residency to study in city
Hong Kong’s subsidised schools will showcase themselves across the border in an effort to attract more students. Photo: Jelly TseA leading Hong Kong educational body will hold its first session for subsidised schools to showcase themselves over the border in a bid to convince parents to send their children to the city to study and help replenish the dwindling local pool of students.
Several institutions will take part in the session expected to be held in Shenzhen on September 8, the Hong Kong Subsidised Secondary Schools Council told the SCMP on Tuesday.
Five of them would each deliver 15-minute presentations in Mandarin to parents and pupils and 10 would distribute informational brochures at the venue, council chairwoman Lee Yi-ying said.
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“The quota was filled by schools in a very short time,” she said. “I hope we can do everything we can to ensure schools have a sufficient number of pupils.”
The session, the first to be held the council over the border, would explain the application procedure and how subsidised secondary schools operated in the city, she added. The schools hoped to attract children who were permanent residents of Hong Kong but living and studying over the border.
The city is contending with a shrinking number of local students thanks to an emigration wave, and the number is expected to worsen in the years ahead due to the city’s persistent low birth rate.
In 2021, two schools were told they did not have enough students in Secondary One classes and would have to submit survival plans to the Education Bureau, while last September, two government schools merged.
Last week, the government proposed paying secondary schools at least HK$500,000 per grade as an incentive to merge with other institutions.
According to government statistics, the number of children eligible for Form One will drop from 71,600 this year to 60,000 in 2029, a nearly 14 per cent decline.
The bureau maintains that the shrinking school-age population is structural and not expected to a period of transition.
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The council predicted up to 200 Primary Five and Six students, as well as their parents, would attend the briefing, to be held at a Shenzhen school.
A growing number of parents on the mainland had expressed an interest in sending their children to secondary schools in Hong Kong following the end to pandemic restrictions on travelling over the border, Lee quoted the head of the hosting school as saying.
“The [Shenzhen] school does not want to only introduce schools that charge tuition fees, and so I told it that pupils who are Hong Kong residents in fact could also study in subsidised schools in the city for free,” she said.
The initiative had attracted schools spread out across the city, including ones some distance from the border, she added.
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The Hong Kong Federation of Education Workers, which has more than 50,000 members, has also called on authorities to tap mainland China for new students for city schools.
In a proposal submitted to Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu for his coming policy address, the group called for greater government efforts to open up a “source of pupils” on the mainland to help support the development of the Northern Metropolis mega project.
The government envisions creating an innovation and technology hub along the border that will also provide homes for as many as 2.5 million people.
“The education departments in Hong Kong and on the mainland should plan earlier and introduce facilitation measures to support cross borders learning and daily needs,” the federation said.