Top talent families gain ESF priority lane

The English Schools Foundation will provide priority interviews to parents and students who move to Hong Kong through the government's Top Talent Pass Scheme in the next academic year.

ESF director of communications Rob Shorthouse said the foundation wants to help new arrivals to access the best education.

"The government's Top Talent Pass scheme is an important part of helping Hong Kong recover from the difficulties of the past few years - and we are delighted to be able to support it by adding it to our list of priority interview categories," Shorthouse said.

ESF, which runs 22 international schools in Hong Kong with more than 18,000 students, also said it would cancel the zoning requirement in which students would be allocated to an ESF school near where they live.

From now until the end of the month, parents can apply to any ESF school for August 2024 places.

"For over 50 years, ESF has been providing world-class education to families in Hong Kong," Shorthouse said.

"With our new zone-free approach to admissions, we have made it simpler for parents to choose the ESF school that they think is best for their child."

The two-year Top Talent Pass Scheme was launched in December for people abroad who earn more than HK$2.5 million annually and those who graduated from the world's top 100 universities with at least three years of work experience over the previous five years.

Among the more than 36,000 applications for the scheme, over two-thirds were from the mainland. About 26,000 have been approved.

On mainland social media Xiaohongshu, some parents said they applied for the scheme just for their children's studies.

A commenter said: "We applied for the pass as we wanted to stay with our children. The tuition fees of international schools in Hong Kong are lower than those in the mainland, and the educational resources in Hong Kong are also better."

The founder of education consultancy Top Schools, Ruth Benny, said although international schools in Hong Kong would like to be "truly international," it was becoming increasingly difficult in recent years due to expat families leaving the city and increasing competition from other schools.

"It's an interesting move. However, many of these children will probably not meet the English language requirements," Benny said when asked about the ESF's admission scheme for those holding a top talent pass.

International schools would use a variety of tests to check a child's academic level and English language proficiency.

"Yet, most international schools cap the number of China passport holders internally," she said, to maintain a variety of nationalities on campus.

Education Bureau statistics showed nonlocal students accounted for about 67 percent of ESF students in the 2021-22 academic year and 66 percent in the 22-23 academic year, below the bureau's requirement of 70 percent.

Since 2009, ESF schools and new campuses of international schools that entered into a service agreement with the bureau upon the allocation of school premises have been required to enroll at least 70 percent of nonlocal students.

The bureau said in April if international schools fail to comply with the service agreement, it may take follow-up action.

eunice.lam@singtaonewscorp.com