The Harrow International School in Hong Kong is not open until September and parents are already fighting over who can pay the most to get their children into this august institution. Wait a minute, it's not the same as the hallowed, 500-year-old institution in Britain, is it? But given the competition, you might think it is. Consider this.
The New York Times said Bo Guagua, son of disgraced Chongqing party chief Bo Xilai, was the first Chinese citizen ever admitted to Harrow - the real one in Middlesex, not the clone in Beijing. So, all those mainland and Hong Kong children whose parents pay exorbitant sums to send them to the school's overseas clones have a snowball's chance in hell of getting into the real one if they try. Still they pay. Tuition in Hong Kong is from HK$110,900 a year to HK$150,800. To increase your chances, your company can buy a HK$3 million corporate capital certificate or you can buy an individual certificate of the same amount. All this does not include room and board.
The Harrow family of schools is so rich it is surely capable of self-finance. Still the Education Bureau is so generous it granted a huge prime site in Tuen Mun to the school at a nominal annual fee. How prime? Next door, the government just sold a housing site for HK$2.73 billion. It plans to give the school an interest-free loan of HK$236 million for facilities, including an indoor pool and tennis courts. The government says our city needs more international schools to attract overseas talent. But the Harrow school is so expensive it will be out of reach of many expat families other than senior executives. It will attract children from rich local and mainland families.
There are many well-established local, ESF and private schools offering affordable schooling, but the government still thinks taxpayers should subsidise a rich foreign franchise to educate privileged children. Indeed, the parent school will receive a percentage of the Hong Kong school's turnover for the use of its name, so we may be indirectly subsidising it. The new government should re-examine Harrow's loan and give it to local schools instead.