Letters | Mount Kelly’s troubles suggest a failure of supervision by Hong Kong’s education regulator

Readers discuss the government’s role in monitoring the operation of schools, what Hong Kong’s New Year resolutions should be, how our new legislators should prove their worth, and the ban on dining in after 6pm

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A woman walks past a Mount Kelly poster outside its Tsim Sha Tsui school on June 15 last year. The former operator of Mount Kelly accumulated millions in debt. Photo: K. Y. Cheng

Published: 7:30am, 17 Jan 2022

The Education Bureau has increased its grip on Hong Kong’s education sector in line with the national security law. In 2020, it stripped a teacher of his teaching registration for purportedly spreading an “independence” message and last year issued guidelines on bringing the national security law into the classroom.

However, under its oversight, hundreds of students, teachers and parents became victims of the troubled Mount Kelly School. The school owes money to many parents and teachers after it charged various fees and failed to pay salaries, suspended classes in June 2021 and lost most of its teaching staff.

Now reportedly under new management, the institution continues its operations in Hong Kong, and more children, more parents and more teachers are at risk of becoming new victims. All this is happening with the Education Bureau’s knowledge.

It has always been well known that setting up an educational institute in Hong Kong can be a lucrative business. One would expect this area to be strictly controlled by the Hong Kong government to protect children and their parents.

In fact, opening a private school is relatively simple, primarily hingeing on obtaining a Certificate of Registration of a School from the Education Bureau after getting clearance from departments like fire safety, health and planning. The bureau checks on school premises, teaching staff and the school manager, but no background checks are conducted on the owners, the masterminds behind the school managers.

This oversight from the Hong Kong government allowed the operator of Mount Kelly to accumulate millions in debt. The school was restructured and new management brought in without refunding parents.