‘Waiting to die’: 19 Hong Kong secondary schools at higher risk of closure under tighter government rules, as they race to enrol more pupils
- Education Bureau says schools will not be allowed to expand in future if they only manage to run two Form One classes for two consecutive academic years
- School principals warn new policy leaves campuses ‘waiting to die’ as city’s student population expected to continue shrinking in coming years
Nineteen Hong Kong secondary schools face a higher risk of closing down if they fail to enrol enough students by mid-September under tighter government rules, a move that principals have said will leave campuses “waiting to die”.
The Education Bureau earlier informed more than 400 aided and government schools that they would not be allowed to open more classes in the future if they only managed to bring in enough students for two Form One classes for two consecutive academic years.
It added schools that could only run one Form One class in the future would also be required to submit a survival plan to officials for approval or no longer accept new secondary students and begin winding down operations.
Under the new policy, schools must secure at least three Form One classes before each year’s headcount in mid-September to avoid endangering their futures.
Official figures from last year showed 19 subsidised and government secondary schools were each running two Form One classes in the 2022-23 academic year.
Tang Fei, a former secondary school principal and a lawmaker, on Wednesday raised concerns over the “lifespan” of schools that could only run two classes and were “counting down” until they were forced to close.
“A principal used the horrible word – ‘hospice care’ – to describe the new arrangement as schools with insufficient students could not be rescued any more,” he said.
The legislator said schools operating only two Form One classes could hardly be expected to meet the threshold by next month, as pupils had already enrolled at their chosen institutions.
“I am pessimistic about those schools’ survival … students from mainland [China] choosing to study in Hong Kong will only choose popular schools, they will not sign up for a school with a low enrolment,” he said.
A school principal who spoke on the condition of anonymity said the government expected campuses to struggle for numbers as the student population fell.
Authorities earlier estimated that the number of children eligible to join Form One would drop by almost 14 per cent from 71,600 this year to 60,000 in 2029, with some opting not to enrol for public sector schools.
“One official has said to us that if schools can only have two Form One classes when there are 50,000 such students, how could they survive in the years when the student number hits below 50,000 or even 40,000?” the principal said.
“The Education Bureau thinks these schools could not survive when the student population keeps falling.”
The bureau will also no longer allow schools submitting survival plans to join the direct subsidy scheme, an option previously available to institutions that failed to reach enrolment thresholds.
“The bureau’s stance is very clear that it needs to cut down the number of classes and schools because the dwindling student population cannot support the current number of institutions,” the principal said.
They added that the new arrangement would speed up the closure of schools.
“Those schools with only two Form One classes are just waiting until they die, the bureau did not want to give them any false hope as they did not allow them to expand even if they are able to do it in the future,” the principal said.
The bureau said the tighter threshold would ensure an accurate reflection of each school’s enrolment numbers and classroom capabilities.
“[It] also reduces the impact on a large number of students switching to other schools after the allocation results are announced and keeps the class structure and teaching environment stable,” the bureau said.
An outlier among institutions struggling to enrol students was Salesians of Don Bosco Ng Siu Mui Secondary School, one of the few to increase the number of Form One classes from two to three in 2020, which it has continued to run for the subsequent years.
Li Kin-man, who became principal in 2019, said he had an entire year working to get the enrolment number up for the school in Kwai Tsing district and urged authorities to give institutions more time to turn things around.
Preventing schools from expanding the number of classes would cut off opportunities for growth and deter parents from enrolling their children at certain places, he added.
“Those schools and their teachers will suffer from lots of pressure and their development will be limited. A school with only 12 classes, meaning two classes in [each of the] six grades, is very hard to operate,” Li said.
His own efforts to save his schools had involved working closely with his primary school counterparts, introducing modern teaching methods and securing external resources, the principal said.
“I didn’t do it all in weeks, it took years to achieve this,” he added.
Two years ago, only two schools with fewer than two Form One classes were forced to close down after failing to get their survival plans approved.
Last year, all of the city’s schools met the threshold and managed to stave off the threat of closing. But two institutions at the time said they would merge in 2024.
Looking ahead, only schools in North and Sham Shui Po districts are expected to see growth in class numbers since both areas are likely to benefit from the return of cross-border students and new immigrants from the mainland and ethnic minority groups.
“During this summer holiday, quite a number of schools received many applications from the children of mainland talent parents coming to Hong Kong and the return of the cross-border students,” a school head, who asked not to be named, said.
“But we do not know if the spike of students will persist.”
