Jake's View | International school model works fine
Expatriate parents finding education fees too high should ask employers for better pay
"The government should really review the whole international school system."
Why review it? The model for the international school system works perfectly well at the moment. The government provides some land, the parents pay for construction of the building with a debenture, the operating costs are met from tuition fees and Hong Kong gets some very good schools.
The only thing I can see going wrong with international schools now is that they are all adopting the International Baccalaureate programme. This is a regimented European curriculum that turns teachers into knowledge assimilation technicians and applies Henry Ford's ideas of car production to the classroom.
But if the object of the exercise is acceptance by any of two English universities or eight American ones and a job with Goldman Sachs on graduation, all of which it is, then the IB is certainly your thing. What the parents want, the parents get. Pay the money and you call the tune.
Mr Ip's comments, of course, were apropos of the English Schools Foundation's decision to accept a phasing out of government subsidies. I didn't know that this measure required acceptance by the ESF but, after much debate and protest by the ESF, it now appears final.