Winning a primary school place: it's a lottery

Next month is an important one for parents across the territory: it's when they find out if their children will be able to attend Primary One at their preferred school, under the government's Primary One Admission System.

Some have adopted a laissez-faire approach, but the allocation scheme has proved frustrating for others. Parents have even been driven away from the public sector to international and direct subsidy schools, the de facto private schools. But rising demand has led to intense competition for places at these, fuelling training centres that feed on parents' anxiety about getting their children into a good school.

The scheme has two stages: discretionary places admission and computer-programmed central allocation.

Parents can apply to a government or aided school in or outside their school district in the discretionary stage, and be offered a place based on a points system. If dissatisfied with the result, they can go through central allocation for schools mostly within their school net, the results of which are released in early June. Public schools are banned from conducting tests or interviews.

But the central system has long been criticised for lacking transparency and for being cumbersome.

Parents compare the second stage to a "big lottery". Cases have emerged of parents applying using false addresses. Serena Cheng, mother of five-year-old Ching-hei, has opted for an alternative route - spending HK$3,000 a month on English and Putonghua lessons to boost her son's chances of getting into DSS schools instead. Cheng also conducted research on interview questions on the internet, and submitted the application complete with a 20-page portfolio listing Ching-hei's list of extracurricular activities, school results, and awards.