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SCMP Reporter

An elite Catholic girls' secondary school is under pressure to go co-educational, angering parents, it emerged yesterday.

 St Rose of Lima's School in Kowloon City - one of the 114 allowed to teach in English from September - is having to move to Sha Tin because it does not have enough space at its present site in Embankment Road, Kowloon City.

 But the Government, which is providing the new site, is putting pressure on the school to accept boys.

 Some parents have threatened to change schools if St Rose becomes co-educational. It has been a girls' school since it was founded in 1949.

 Others do not want the school to move away from the Boundary Street area, the site of a number of schools famed for producing 'straight-A' students.

 The present campus comprises a kindergarten, primary and secondary sections.

 Sister Margaret Fung Sui-fun, headmistress of the secondary section, said yesterday the campus was short of space for development. She said her section had 19 classes but only 14 classrooms.

 'The Education Department says our secondary section can move to Sha Tin so the primary section will have room to change to whole-day schooling,' she said.

 'The premises are still being built. It's a standard secondary school and will be able to accommodate more students and facilities. We should be able to move in September next year.

 'But we are still negotiating with the department details of the move.

 'Matters such as whether we can continue to accept only girls will have to be sorted out first,' she said.

 Sister Fung said the department had three criteria in permitting the setting up of a school: that it use mother-tongue teaching, participate in the School Management Initiative scheme and be co-educational.

 'We are still uncertain whether we need to change to co-education. But I told students that we might have to change, and then the next day I got complaints from parents,' she said.

 Sister Fung said the school also needed to raise $9 million to pay for interior design, furniture and other equipment for the new school.

 Tang Chee-shing, principal of Sheng Kung Hui Kei Oi School, said that the department, even if it did not have a hard and fast rule, encouraged schools to accept both boys and girls.

 Mr Tang, vice-chairman of the Hong Kong Education Policy Concern Organisation, said schools in new towns were under particular pressure, and that it was the trend to have more co-educational schools.

 A spokeswoman for the Education Department said last night the case was under negotiation. She said parents' views would be taken into account.

 There are more than 400 government and aided secondary schools, 41 for boys only and 46 for girls only.



Parents fear elite school will go co-ed