Education Bureau to close some public schools, says class reduction inevitable

A plunge in students has made it unavoidable to adjust the overall number of primary and secondary classes, Secretary for Education Kevin Yeung Yun-hung said.

The pandemic has persisted for over two years and normal traveler clearance between the mainland and Hong Kong has not yet been resumed, deterring cross-boundary students from returning to local schools. 

Due to the dropping out of cross-boundary students, an emigration wave, a persistently low local fertility rate and insufficient school-age children in several districts, many primary and secondary schools have been facing the crisis of class reduction and school closure. 

Yeung said it was anticipated that the gradual decrease in the future school-age population will be structural rather than transient. It remains unclear whether and when the birth rate in Hong Kong will rebound. 

“We believe that, as the future school-age population will continue to drop, it is unavoidable to adjust the overall number of primary and secondary classes correspondingly,” Yeung wrote in a reply to lawmakers on Wednesday. 

He said the Bureau, being the school sponsoring body of government schools, will lead by example and formulate long-term development plans for government schools. 

"The Education Bureau may cease the operation of schools with persistent under-enrollment, merge government schools as necessary or relocate schools in districts with a sizable surplus of school places to districts with excessive demand or new development areas."

He said the Bureau has already arranged to cease the operation of the Island Road Government Primary School from the 2021/22 school year and merged the Lung Cheung Government Secondary School with the Kowloon Technical School starting from the 2022/23 school year.

It has also relocated the Canton Road Government Primary School and Shau Kei Wan East Government Secondary School to the new school premises at the Anderson Road Quarry site in Sai Kung District in the 2025/26 and 2026/27 school years respectively to minimize the impact of declining demand for school places. 
 
He also said the four time-limited primary schools operated to cope with the transient increase in primary one students in the past will cease operation gradually as originally planned.

At the same time, Yeung said school premises allocation in the future will accord priority to re-provisioning of schools or expansion of school premises, especially those schools which are far below the prevalent building standards.
 
He said small class teaching has been implemented in about 80 percent of public primary schools in Hong Kong. Arrangements have been made by the EDB for another 11 schools to start in the 2022/23 school year. 

As for secondary schools, the EDB will timely review from 2025 the number of students allocated to each form one class, the criteria for approving classes and other related arrangements to address the structural situation of a persistent decrease in demand for places.

It has also been meeting with individual school sponsoring bodies to urge them to explore ways to consolidate their resources in an orderly manner and encourage them to plan ahead to cope with the declining students.

As for cross-boundary students, the bureau said it will provide them with appropriate support as necessary. 

He said schools have flexibly adopted diversified learning and teaching strategies, including e-learning platforms and real-time online lessons, to support students' continuous learning at home.
 
To cater to the learning needs as well as physical and mental development of cross-boundary students, the EDB commissioned a service provider to offer two programs, namely "Learning Support" and "Psychosocial Support" in Luohu, Futian and Nanshan districts in Shenzhen from May to July 2021 for primary and secondary students residing in Shenzhen. 

In view of students' positive responses towards the two programs, the EDB organized them again from October 2021 to January 2022 with more places.