Illegal kindergartens will be prosecuted immediately and their supervisors and principals could be deregistered in the new academic year.
No grace period would be given and the names of the schools would be released to the public, Assistant Director of Education Cheng Man-yiu pledged yesterday.
The new measures were announced as the Education Department revealed that 13 of the 16 branches of the Cannan Kindergarten were over-enrolled.
Some of the branches were listed as 'serious cases', along with 30 other kindergartens throughout the SAR.
Mr Cheng said: 'We don't expect to see any kindergartens admit more students than permitted as we will take action against them immediately should we find any in the new academic year.
'Officers will be sent to those schools with bad records in September and they will count the number of students per class. We are going to send this message to all kindergartens,' he said.
'In the coming months, we will arrange meetings with operators of those chain kindergartens to address the issue.' Mr Cheng was speaking after a meeting with Cannan Kindergarten supervisor Lam Mei.
