As well as attracting more overseas and mainland students to Hong Kong universities, admitting more mainland students to secondary schools could be a good money earner, educators say.
But the difference in curriculums remains one stumbling block, and the government task force is looking at how the city's private senior secondary schools handle this.
Fung Kai Public School is one of the pioneers exploring the feasibility of opening to mainlanders. Its school-sponsoring body has been pressing the government for more than four years to allow it to transform the now-vacant Fung Kai No 2 Secondary School into a secondary boarding school aimed at students from the Pearl River Delta.
Fung Kai chief executive Ma Siu-leung said Hong Kong would lose out to Singapore if the government continued dithering. 'Singapore has been doing intense promotion on the mainland for a long time,' he said.
While mainlanders can study in Hong Kong tertiary institutes, there are no policies supporting the local secondary sector in accommodating mainland students. In spite of the high demand for local secondary places from parents in Shenzhen and Guangzhou, the central government has yet to loosen immigration rules.
'Current education policy does not count students from mainland and Taiwan as non-locals,' Ma said.
