Over 27,000 primary and secondary students discontinued education in Hong Kong last year amid the city’s emigration wave.
There were 27,996 fewer students at the start of the last academic year compared to in 2021, according to HKFP’s calculations based on the Education Bureau’s annual enrolment statistics report.
The figures were calculated by comparing the total enrolment figures of students from the last year of kindergarten to the fifth year of secondary school in 2021 to the enrolment figures of students from the first year of primary school to the last year of secondary school. The calculations took into account students who repeated a grade.
Polly Chan, the principal of Yaumati Catholic Primary School (Hoi Wang Road), told Ming Pao that the school had been seeing a trend of students leaving the school throughout the semester.
She added however that more students were enrolling in the school alongside the government’s launch of schemes to attract talent to the city.
Hong Kong has been seeing an emigration wave since 2020 amid the aftermath of the 2019 protests and unrest, as well as the city’s strict pandemic restrictions during Covid-19.
The UK said that 144,500 people had moved to the UK in the two years since London launched an emigration scheme for holders of British National (Overseas) passports. The scheme was introduced after Beijing enacted the national security law in the city.
The Education Bureau said in response to questions from HKFP that student mobility was “common,” adding that parents had the right to choose their children’s schools. The authority also said it predicted that the decline in the city’s school-age population was “a structural issue” rather than a temporary one, based on population predictions.
The bureau added that it would “adjust the number of schools” step by step, hoping to ensure a “soft landing”.
‘Structural problem’
Asked during his weekly Tuesday press conference about how he viewed the drop in student enrolment, Lee said the fall was a “structural problem” related to population flow.
“Hong Kong often sees people coming and going. Although there are forecasts that this trend will continue, I believe the worst has passed,” Lee said.
He added that the city had a low birth rate compared to other cities, and that he was “considering ways to encourage citizens to give birth to enrich the population.”
Hong Kong has among the lowest birth rates in Asia, according to the census department. The city’s birth rate, which is on a steady decline, stood at 0.77 in 2021 – down from 1.285 in 2012.
Lee made talent attraction a key part of his Policy Address last year, with the introduction of the “Top Talent Pass Scheme” targeting high net worth individuals and graduates of top universities around the world.
As of the end of May, authorities had issued 21,000 visas through the scheme. Around 95 per cent of successful applicants were from mainland China, The Collective reported.
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