Monitor | Introduce a voucher system to settle the ESF funding debate
Allow schools to offer their own curriculum but give each permanent resident child a stipend to spend on an education of their choice
The Hong Kong government's education funding policy is in a mess. It's time to tear it up and start again.
Yesterday Secretary of Education Eddie Ng Hak-kim wrote to the South China Morning Post to set out his position on government subsidies to the English Schools Foundation. In a nutshell, he argued that: "ESF schools offer a non-local curriculum. It is not our established policy to provide recurrent subvention to schools offering a non-local curriculum." Therefore "the existing recurrent subvention will be phased out".
This line of reasoning betrays some severely muddled thinking.
The subsidy paid to the ESF works out at around HK$21,000 per pupil per year. If it were to be withdrawn with the foundation becoming a purely private sector organisation, the ESF would have a powerful incentive to jack up its fees to fund investment in better facilities. In turn better facilities would allow it further to increase its fees in a continuous upward spiral.
In the short term that would mean a 40 per cent increase in fees to bring the ESF into line with other private institutions like the Australian International School or the English stream of the French International School.
It would also mean a sharp rise in capital levies and a proliferation of non-refundable up-front debentures. Many families would be unable to afford the extra costs, and would be forced to withdraw their children. Given that some 70 per cent of ESF pupils are permanent residents, largely of local descent, many would be placed in the local school system, where they would cost the government twice as much in subsidies as they do now in the ESF.