Schools

The reason we have only found an apartment four months after arriving in Hong Kong was that we didn't know where Hannah would be going to school until quite recently.

Finding places at schools in Hong Kong is notoriously difficult, especially for primary, and especially this year.   So back in November 2011, as soon as I knew we might move here, I started submitting applications.  

We eventually applied to 10 different international schools spread right across the Hong Kong SAR.  From the Japanese Inconvenient School in the northern New Territories, to the ANZAC School in Kowloon, the Goldman Sachs International School on the Peak, the Chinese Intense School in the middle of  Hong Kong, down to the Happy Kids Inspirational School on the south coast of the island.  These 10 schools are all very different and all very good in their own way, some selective and some not.  

We couldn't really apply for state schools.   Hong Kong has a large network of state-subsidized english-medium-of-instruction schools run by the ESF foundation which are good quality, largely non-selective, and reasonably priced.   Unfortunately ESF stands for 'every school full'.  Their admissions system requires you to become resident in a catchment first, then apply to the local ESF school only and wait for a place to become available, which can be 2 or more years.   So it works better for longer-term residents than newcomers.  

Hannah had interviews with three selective schools and was unsuccessful in the first two.   Shortly after we arrived she was lucky to be granted an interview at the ultra-selective Goldman Sachs International School.  But on-the-day she was quite unsettled, and she joined the 80+% of interviewees who were rejected.   In retrospect this was probably a good thing.

She was also put on the waiting list for other, less-selective schools, and we got her a NZ passport to gain priority for the ANZAC school.   However due to the number of applicants ahead of her on the waiting-list, sibling priority etc,  none of these schools were expecting to be able to offer her a place until 2013.  

So we were very pleased and relieved in June when we received an offer of a place at the Happy Kids Inspirational School.   This is a highly regarded American school and seems to have a style which should suit Hannah.  They are also faith-based and places priority on character in a way I find appealing.  

The main down-side is the high fees - which I think are second only to the HK branch of Harrow School!   Also the location of the campus on the expensive side of Hong Kong dashed our hopes of containing our rent costs   Happy Kids IS has high expectations of parental engagement which may be a challenge for us to meet, and I expect we will have some culture-shock.   But over-all this is a very positive and exciting opportunity for Hannah.  

Once the school was fixed we could start to look for apartments in a fairly short radius from the school campus in Repulse Bay, since Hannah is too young for a long commute.   Eventually the best compromise seemed to be to stay at Parkview which is 30min by bus for Hannah each way,  reasonably convenient to my work due to the shuttle-bus into central, and (believe-it-or-not) relatively cheap compared to apartments nearer the school.