Languages and culture
Students at St Margaret's through-train school learn three languages and are offered exchange visits abroad to broaden their horizons.
Situated in the fast-changing area of West Kowloon, St Margaret's Co-educational English Secondary and Primary School is an outward-looking institution that sets ambitious targets for its students.
Principal Grace Tam, who has been with the school for more than 35 years, maintains that languages and communications are the key to unlocking good prospects for its students in today's globalised economy.
"We believe that communication and presentation skills are very important," says Tam. "If you know one more language, you can communicate with more people in the world. This gives you an absolute advantage over the others. That is why we place a very strong emphasis on language and communications in our curriculum."
As a Direct Subsidy Scheme (DSS) school, St Margaret's receives government funding on a per capita basis, and enjoys flexibility in admissions and curriculum design. It is one of the small number of such schools that accommodate non-Chinese-speaking students, with about 20 per cent of its 1,000-odd students originating from different countries including Nepal, Pakistan, Malaysia, Italy, France and the United States.
The Catholic school became a through-train school for boys and girls from Primary One to Secondary Six in 2000, after it was allocated a new government-funded school building at its campus in Cheung Sha Wan.
Reflecting its multicultural nature, the school requires all primary students to study a foreign language - Japanese, French, Spanish or German - on top of English and Chinese, with the latter taught in Putonghua. Students can continue the extra language subject as an elective at secondary level.