Hong Kong Schools admission questions.....

[linkee]

Re: homework
Well our kid comes home at 3:45. In bed by 8:45. That's 5 hours a day. Spending 30-45 mins on times tables / spellings / Chinese doesn't seem detrimental to me. Still leaves lots of time for activities, friends, reading, TV, dinner, etc.

Re: local schools and analytical thinking
I've heard this before. I've met lots of Hong Kongers who were educated at local schools and are hard working, sensible, bi/trilingual, biliterate, and have demanding corporate careers. I can't see anything wrong with their analytical thinking. Maybe there's something wrong with my analytical thinking.

[qhank]

You're missing the 3rd category which is all the imported labour (from the Mainland, the Philippines and other places) living in HK to support the tourist industry. I'd be really quite surprised if at any particular moment Macau passport holders are a majority of the people in Macau.

Macanese often don't look Chinese at all, but they're not imported labour and they always speak Cantonese.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macanese_people
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Cordero

[PLamHK]

Macanese often don't look Chinese at all, but they're not imported labour and they always speak Cantonese.

I'm aware of that.

But on checking the figures I am, frankly a bit surprised that Filipinos are only about 5% of the resident population, albeit that only 41% of Macau residents were born in Macau. The biggest group by place of birth is the mainland (44%). The 2021 census also showed that 81% claimed Cantonese as the usual language spoken at home. So Macau was a correct answer since, apparently, nearly all of the mainlanders living there speak Cantonese at home.

[Mrs. Jones]

Yes we did for the primary years.

[linkee]

One more observation: In this generation, many affluent Hong Kongers who send their kids to international schools went to the west for their own university education. They saw the options there and came back to HK.

They want their kids to be Chinese-English bilingual in HK. It feels unnatural for the parents to speak English at home (though they often do at the office), so they’re willing to pay a school to provide an English-speaking environment. That’s the main service that international schools provide in HK.

The schools like to claim that they “prepare kids for western universities”. True – but so do local schools. UK/US/Australian/Canadian universities are constantly advertising in the MTR (in Chinese!), assuring parents that they are delighted to accept kids with HKDSE. This is not new.

A very common HK hack is to go to local school throughout, and then switch to an international school just for the final 2 years. Two reasons for this:
1) IB is easier than HKDSE.
2) Easier to get into a sought-after course at a HK university via IB stream than via DSE stream. This is also why it’s tricky these days to make generalisations about IB graduates vs DSE graduates: a surprising number of IB graduates in HK did most of their schooling in the local system.

[FrancisX]

The idea that international schools in HK are an easy ride with no homework is an odd one.

Yes, kids get very little (if any) homework in primary, which many studies show is the time to learn social and analytical skills rather than an overdose of rote learning, homework and tests. In secondary though it ramps up, and one into DP it's a relatively heavy workload. I like that IB evolves the child slowly rather than burdening them with unnecessary rote learning and a trolley full of books to take home every night.

[chingleutsch]

Just a further note on Canto/ Mando:
traditional characters are also used in Taiwan, and in a lot of media produced in/by/ for the Chinese diaspora.
Canto is also the lingua franca in many of the longer-established Chinatowns around the world - better for building relationships with families with clout, no matter whether you're house, job or spouse hunting...

[Guy_in_HK]

Re: homework
Well our kid comes home at 3:45. In bed by 8:45. That's 5 hours a day. Spending 30-45 mins on times tables / spellings / Chinese doesn't seem detrimental to me.

That's awesome that that's all the time your kid uses to do their homework from a local school. However, some information is like how long is a piece of string.

Anyway, local schools are monetarily free to students (depending on how you count), and at least one is supposed to accept all comers including NCS students. Good luck finding it if you've recently arrived in HK, but I guess keep asking for help and things will probably work out.