PLANS FOR A NEW school offering international-style education on Lantau Island are about to be unveiled. The school would have dual streams for local and non-Chinese students, with Hong Kong and international curricula and an emphasis on arts and outward bound activities.
It sounds like the school many have been waiting for. But it is not the long-awaited, sparkling new $225 million English Schools Foundation campus about to be built in Discovery Bay.
It's around the headland in Mui Wo, where an almost empty campus built 25 years ago to accommodate up to 1,000 students already has everything - even a 'star gate' for star-watching - except children to fill its classrooms.
Its proponents see their plans for a dual-stream school catering for all age groups in southern Lantau as the only way to save a school that has experienced dramatic falling enrolment over the past two decades, reflecting a population freefall in Mui Wo from about 30,000 residents to just 3,000.
To others, the plan is just a pipedream.
Au Pak-yuen, principal of the New Territories Heung Yee Kuk Southern District Secondary School, believes his school can be rejuvenated to cater for the island's changing population - both local and non-Chinese - and can build on the strengths of its location by offering a special emphasis on creative arts and outward bound activities, as well as a career-oriented curriculum in fields such as tourism, with a special focus on environmental protection.
