Parents seek permanent home for school

The city's first direct subsidy school has been without a permanent home since its founding in 1965 because of government restrictions that effectively exclude it from site allocation exercises, parents say.

St Margaret's Girls' College is to move out of its Caine Road campus next month as it is unable to afford the new lease of HK$400,000 per month from September 1 - a doubling of the rent it was paying in the 2010-11 academic year.

As the secondary school prepares to relocate from Mid-Levels to a five-year temporary site in Sha Tin granted by the government, parents of its pupils bemoan official policy that has barred it from qualifying for site allocations.

In 2012, the government exercise required applicant schools to surrender their existing premises, making St Margaret's ineligible as it did not own any campus, Paul Stables, chairman of the school's parent-teacher association, said.

"There had been no exercise for which St Margaret's would have been eligible," he said.

Ironically, the Education Bureau had been telling St Margaret's to apply through the site allocation exercise for a permanent home, he said.

The Sha Tin site came with the condition that no new Secondary One pupils would be enrolled.