HK$500,000 per grade payments offered to Hong Kong secondary schools to encourage mergers as school rolls fall
- Headcount in schools to be carried out by Education Bureau in three weeks; schools with too few pupils may face closure order
- Education Bureau says hand forced because of ‘structural rather than transitional’ decline in pupil numbers and need for sustainable system.
A payment of at least HK$500,000 (US$63,745) for each grade is to be offered to Hong Kong secondary schools as an incentive to merge with other institutions as the city faces a double whammy from falling rolls and the emigration wave.
Schools with too few students in Form One – fewer than two classes with a total of 26 pupils – may face closure after the exercise.
“Since the decline in the school-age population is structural instead of transitional, we must plan for the supply of public school places in the long run to ensure the healthy and sustainable development of the educational ecology and make good use of public resources,” the bureau said in a circular.
But the circular said schools could retain teachers to be made redundant as a result of a merger for at least three years.
