Hong Kong kindergarten applications fall by a third versus last year; falling birth rate and emigration wave key factors

But she said the falling application number did not reflect the severity of the problem.

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“This is because parents will sign up for a few kindergartens to pick from, so the actual number of registrations will definitely be even lower than the number of offers we give out to the applicants,” she said.

“The number will keep falling as people emigrate and tend not to give birth. I do not think the emigration wave will stop.”

Parents started submitting registration certificates last week to non-profit-making preschools, which need the documents to obtain subsidies from the government in the next school year.

Non-profit-making kindergartens account for three-quarters of the preschools in the city. The government is offering HK$38,170 (US$4,890) this year for each pupil attending half-day sessions and HK$49,620 for those going to full-day ones. Schools caring for toddlers until the early evening are entitled to HK$61,070.

Private independent and non-local preschools do not take part in the subsidy scheme and families have to pay the tuition fees themselves.

Parents must apply for the registration certificates between September and November, about a year before their children start their studies.

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Although the figures for the number of applications for the certificate for the next school year were not yet available, the tally in the past five school years showed a continual falling trend, according to the Education Bureau.

The number for the 2019-20 school year stood at 55,011, but currently stood at 42,620, marking a 22 per cent decrease.

A bureau spokesman said no simple conclusion on kindergarten student numbers should be drawn based on the figures for the application for the certificates, as parents could apply for the documents for admission to all the levels from K1 to K3.

Lam said the preschools had already held numerous open days to promote themselves in face of the shrinking student population.

The number of births in Hong Kong started to drop in 2017, going from 56,500 to a record low of 32,500 in 2022.

The number of registered births in the first 10 months of last year fell slightly compared with the same period in the previous year, falling from 27,823 to 27,293. The final figure in 2023 will be announced next month.

Lam called on the government to consider turning all kindergartens into ones offering full-day sessions, aligning them with primary and secondary schools.

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“Then it allows more kindergartens to have sufficient students if there are no morning and afternoon sessions for the parents to choose,” she said. “Actually there are a lot of choices for parents.”

A number of kindergartens have been running advertisements on social media in the hopes of boosting application numbers, with some highlighting their teaching of fourth languages such as Spanish, French or Japanese on top of Cantonese, Mandarin and English.

Some kindergartens have also held numerous activities with primary schools operating under the same sponsoring bodies to expose students to more diversified learning experience and encourage parents to sign up their children.

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The government earlier announced it would provide a one-off HK$20,000 bonus to eligible parents for their newborn babies to boost the birth rate.

The administration expected that, from 2024-25, the number of births would increase by 20 per cent to about 39,000 annually from the record low in 2022.

But the boosted figure will still be much lower than most of the years before 2020 when more than 50,000 births were recorded annually.