Schools in Hong Kong are being forced to merge or prepare for closure as a decade-long decline in the birthrate and an exodus of residents from the territory has led to a plunge in student numbers.
Local media have reported that at least five schools face closure in the coming years after they failed to reach the minimum 16 enrollments in first grade.
There have been two cases of schools merging with each other due to insufficient student numbers.
Photo: Bloomberg
Hong Kong Secretary for Education Christine Choi (蔡若蓮) on Saturday flagged that “maybe there are some others coming.”
“We are still communicating with different school sponsoring bodies,” she said.
Education department data showed a steady decline in kindergarten student numbers since 2015, from about 185,000 down to almost 156,000 in 2021-2022. Elementary-school enrollments also dropped, from 373,000 in 2019-2020 to 364,000 in 2020-2021, and to about 349,000 the next school year.
The private Tak Nga Primary School last month told parents that it would stop teaching first-grade classes from 2024-2025 and would close completely in 2028, the South China Morning Post reported.
“Since 2018, the school has failed to admit sufficient pupils because of the falling birthrate in Hong Kong, and the problem is further aggravated by the emigration wave in recent years,” the school’s funding body reportedly said in a letter to parents.
The Post earlier this month reported that four international education organizations had been warned they faced termination of their operating agreements after they failed to enroll the minimum 70 percent non-local students, some for a second year.
The paper yesterday — citing anonymous principals — reported that five schools across Hong Kong were now facing closure.
Hong Kong’s birthrate is one of the lowest in the world and, like several nations in east Asia, it is facing the demographic crisis of an aging population. Apart from an increase measured from 2003 to 2011, the birthrate has steadily fallen from 35 per 1,000 population in 1961 to 5.2 per 1,000 population in 2021.
Hong Kong government efforts, including financial inducements and tax relief, have failed to turn the birthrate around.
The issue has been exacerbated by an exodus of residents and expats from Hong Kong, driven by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the government’s crackdown on dissent and political freedom.
One person working in the education sector said that because teachers were among the people leaving, the pending closures were perhaps not having a huge impact on the overall number of teaching jobs available, but there were concerns that there would not be enough qualified teachers for high-school classes, which would be the last to shrink.
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