Parents of pupils at a leading international school have won a battle against having their children temporarily moved from The Peak to Ma On Shan.
The German Swiss International School said yesterday that the 300 upper primary students - displaced by planned renovations - would instead be moved to a disused school building in Wan Chai.
The school board, which said a little more than a month ago that it was determined to go ahead with the move, had faced a parents' revolt amid threats to vote its members out of office. Instead of Ma On Shan, the children will be moved to a building at 30 Oi Kwan Road that most recently housed the Victoria Shanghai Academy. A school spokesman said the decision had been made after the board was alerted to that alternative by 'a few supportive parents'.
But the move, originally planned for next year, will have to be delayed until 2012 because the building will be occupied until then by the secondary section of the Singapore International School. Lower primary students will move to a new campus in Pok Fu Lam next year, as planned.
A spokesman for a parent coalition welcomed the sudden change but was unsure whether they would abandon plans for a motion to replace the board at an extraordinary general meeting.
'This is a great result for our children and a fitting reward for all the parents who fought so long against the move to Ma On Shan,' the spokesman said.
However, parents who had removed their children from the school to avoid the move, or who had taken their children off the waiting list because of the plan, were not so happy.