Recent cases when parents have pulled their children out of school include that of Dearing Leung, whose father removed her from a Tai Po primary school in February 2000, when she was nine.
Her father, Leung Chi-kwong, claimed Hong Kong teaching methods were inhumane. After a 30-month standoff with authorities, he finally sent her to a mainland school in Tanmen town, Hainan.
In a celebrated case in 1986, Kwok Ah-nui, then five, was forcibly removed from her home in the Kwai Hing housing estate on the orders of Anson Chan Fang On-sang, then director of social welfare, after reports she was being kept a virtual prisoner by her mentally unstable mother.
A report by the ombudsman last year said the public watchdog had studied four school dropout cases in the previous seven years, including that of Dearing Leung.
The report prompted a pledge from Education and Manpower Bureau officials to enforce compulsory schooling.
Compulsory education for children aged between six and 15 was introduced in 1979.