International schools in Hong Kong lose 12 per cent of non-local students in 4 years

At Legco meeting on enrolment figures at 54 international schools, lawmaker Chu Kwok-keung warns they are taking students away from local institutions
But Secretary for Education Christine Choi says enrolment numbers are affected by host of factors

Education in Hong Kong

William Yiu

Published: 6:30pm, 17 Apr 2023

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The number of non-local students studying at international schools in Hong Kong has fallen by nearly 12 per cent in the last four years, according to education authorities, who have reiterated that operators may lose their contracts if they fail to meet the required threshold for enrolment.

At a Legislative Council meeting on Monday, the Education Bureau also dismissed the concerns of a lawmaker that the changes in enrolment levels had indirectly led local schools to slash classes or even cease operation.

Chu Kwok-keung, the legislator for the education constituency and a primary school principal, asked what types of penalties could be imposed for non-compliance after the government revealed the English Schools Foundation (ESF) and three other foreign education institutions had received warning letters for failing to admit the required number of non-local students for two consecutive years.

“After receiving the warning letters, the international schools still continued to violate the rules. I would like to ask the secretary [for education], what else can you do besides issuing the warning letter?” Chu said.

Warning letters are not enough, argues education sector lawmaker Chu Kwok-keung. Photo: Dickson Lee

“International schools and local schools are both affected by the decline in the school-age population. The current situation is that the international schools can fill the vacancies with local students, meaning they transfer the enrolment difficulties to local schools, and even cause shrinking classes and the axing of schools.”

If the only penalty they faced was a letter, they could continue to violate the rules with relative impunity, he argued.

Hong Kong is home to 54 international schools, with 22 operated by the ESF. According to official figures, the number of non-local students at international schools fell by nearly 12 per cent from 30,499 in the 2019-20 academic year to 26,768 in the latest one. Non-locals accounted for about 66 per cent of the student population at the schools, while the rest were locals.

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The number of local students at the educational institutions has been increasing in recent years, rising from 9,853 in 2018-19 to 13,858 in 2022-23, an increase of more than 40 per cent.

The bureau raised the required proportion of non-local students enrolled at international schools subject to a service agreement with the government to an average of 70 per cent in 2009, up from 50 per cent. The level was temporarily relaxed in recent years for several newly established international schools due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Secretary for Education Christine Choi Yuk-lin said every international school had a limit on the number of local students they could enrol and ones that exceeded that number would face penalties when the bureau reviewed their service agreements, including possibly losing their contracts.

Students at the Hong Kong International School in Tai Tam. Authorities raised the proportion of non-local students enrolled at international schools with government contracts to an average of 70 per cent in 2009. Photo: Dickson Lee

But she expressed doubt over Chu’s argument that the survival of local schools was dependent on enrolment numbers at international ones.

“Will [local students denied places at international schools] go back to the local public education system? That is the question and we should not easily draw a conclusion. They may go to other international schools in our neighbouring countries and the Greater Bay Area,” the secretary said.

The bay area is Beijing’s ambitious drive to turn Hong Kong and Macau into an innovation hub with nine other cities, including neighbouring Shenzhen and Guangzhou.

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According to the latest statistics from the bureau, the number of students studying in government and aided primary and secondary schools shrank by 3 per cent in five years, dropping from 533,000 in 2017-18 to 553,000 in 2021-22.

Choi also said she had heard the demand for international school places had increased following the government’s launch of a scheme to attract talent from around the world.