Hong Kong schools hit by falling enrolments hope to woo more mainland Chinese students at second education exposition

A second education-themed exposition to attract mainland Chinese students to schools in Hong Kong will be held in July, following the success of the first last month. Stem Plus, a company which worked with four major school councils to organise the Greater Bay Area Hong Kong Education Expo, said it hoped to have more kindergartens, primary and secondary schools represented at the next fair. The three-day expo in December featured about 130 schools, mainly secondary institutions, and drew around 36,000 visitors, mostly mainlanders living in Hong Kong or across the border. Peter Lau Ching-wai, founder and chief executive officer of Stem Plus, expected more than 200 schools at the next fair, from July 5 to 7. “Many principals are quite positive about the expo as it can really help them with enrolment,” Lau said. “One received 150 application forms during the event.” He said many parents who attended the event last month asked about kindergartens, but only two preschools were present. “We are now liaising with some groups representing the preschool sector to invite kindergartens to join,” he said. His company coordinated the December event which was organised by the Hong Kong Subsidised Secondary School Council, the Hong Kong Direct Subsidy Scheme Schools Council, the Subsidised Primary Schools Council and the Hong Kong Aided Primary School Heads Association. Although not involved in the July fair, the councils will take part in a third expo to be held in December. The city’s schools have been grappling with falling enrolments as a result of the shrinking number of births, which fell from 52,900 in 2019 to 43,000 in 2020, 37,000 in 2021 and a low of 32,500 in 2022. Schools that failed to attract enough enrolments faced the danger of being merged or shut down. Hong Kong school expo for mainland Chinese pupils draws nearly 10,000 attendees The expo was a way to boost enrolment with the children of mainlanders who had moved to the city, or those from the Greater Bay Area, which encompasses Hong Kong, Macau and nine cities in Guangdong province. Lau said mainlanders who visited the expo last month liked having the principals present to answer their questions directly. “The schools whose principals were present were obviously popular, as parents appreciated being shown that respect, and they could also get more useful details from the heads,” he said. He said planning had begun with the school councils for the third expo in December, with a venue already booked. Dion Chen, chairman of the Direct Subsidy Scheme Schools Council, said the response last month was “better than expected”, with some schools receiving numerous applications. “Parents asked for details of applications for Primary One to Primary Six and Secondary One to Secondary Five,” he said. Visitors from areas beyond the bay area, which the Hong Kong schools were not targeting, also attended. “Some came from Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing and Wuhan and some were even from the three northeast provinces, very far from Hong Kong,” he said. Visitors flock to Hong Kong product expo as ‘food plaza’ makes welcome return They included parents planning to move to the city under various immigration or talent schemes, and others who wanted their children who had been born in the city to attend schools there. “Some said their priority before settling in Hong Kong was to secure a school place for their children. They had not even decided where to live, as they first wanted to see which school their children would attend,” Chen said. Felix Yan Ho-on, chairman of the Hong Kong Early Childhood Educators Association, said the city’s subsidised preschools might not be keen to take part in the expo as they were less attractive to mainland parents. “Mainland talent coming to Hong Kong under various schemes may be able to afford private preschools and might not choose subsidised kindergartens in public housing estates,” he said. But some preschools near the mainland border, like those in North district, may be suitable for mainland children born in Hong Kong and living in Guangdong. Yan said those preschools might be interested in joining the expo, as their selling point was that children would have a shorter daily commute compared with those going to kindergartens in Kowloon. The preschool sector was first to bear the brunt of the city’s falling number of babies, with enrolments sliding steadily since 2020. Hong Kong Food Expo 2023 and other fairs attract nearly half a million visitors The number of applications received by each subsidised kindergarten for the next school year had generally dropped by 20 to 30 per cent, he said. The Hong Kong government had issued more than 47,000 dependant visas to children of all talent recruited through seven schemes as of last November. The Education Bureau said earlier it had not gathered figures on how many of these children joined the city’s public schools.