'Local' ESF more at home in international system

After an unforgivably long period of dithering by successive education secretaries, it seems that the government is determined to phase out public funding for the English Schools Foundation. For many parents who aspire to send their children to ESF schools, this is worrying news. For those with an intense dislike of the organisation, Christmas seems to have come early.

Why have the government and the ESF been unable to reach an accommodation, and why is it all taking so long? As usual, there is fault on both sides.

The ESF's strapline is "Hong Kong schools. A world of opportunity." This neatly sums up how the organisation sees itself at a strategic level: part of the spectrum of local education options and distinct from the international schools. The ESF points to the proportion of students whose parents are permanent residents (more than 70 per cent), their ethnicity (almost half are Chinese) and how a growing number go on to universities in Hong Kong rather than overseas.

And yet, with a few honourable exceptions, ESF schools have remarkably little interaction with the local system. Who do its teachers network with; its rugby teams compete with; its debating societies dispute with? International schools. These represent the ESF's comfort zone and perhaps, deep down, how ESF schools view themselves.

It's difficult to convince others that you are part of the local system if you don't really believe it yourself. This has been the ESF's undoing.

Once it had jumped through all the hoops of reform demanded by the government, it should have lobbied hard to be included in the Direct Subsidy Scheme, like so many other local schools.

This would have resulted in a little "loss of sovereignty", but ESF pupils would finally have received an equitable level of funding. Instead, the ESF wished to continue under a unique funding regime that the government is clearly uncomfortable with and which provokes the ire of a vocal minority.