modern family
Interviews and testing are commonplace for Hong Kong pre-schools and schools.
shortlisted candidates would be vying for 150 spots. When I logged onto the school website a few weeks later and read that #875745 had been rejected, I spared telling my daughter. I knew there was a 75% chance this would happen. But there is something that feels basically wrong in your gut, when you’re told that your child isn’t worthy of attending the first grade. I know a Hong Kong father – fluently bilingual, overseas educated, gainfully employed – who took his son to 12 of these things. The kid was rejected 11 times; the only acceptance was his father’s alma mater because, in Hong Kong, you get bonus points for that. So like local and expat families across the city, we’re stuck waiting. We hold onto hope that another interview goes better, or a spot opens up at the English Schools Foundation. My husband and I weigh how much we can realistically pay in the nomination rights and debentures – ranging from the tens of thousands to the millions of dollars – that let rich kids skip the queue. Or we resign ourselves to a public school
lottery that may assign Chloe to a nearby school that suits her, or a faraway school that doesn’t. In other circumstances, we would happily let our children attend public schools - as we both did in the West. But the sad reality is that, even among local Hong Kongers, public schools here are known for unkind teachers, outdated methods, high pressure and ridiculous homework. On top of that, there is little support for children speaking Chinese as a second language. It is such an enormous difference to the way I was raised in small-town America. I was never pushed, punished or judged, even though I showed up for kindergarten with basically zero English. And I was never interviewed for anything either – not until I was 16 and applying for college. Joyce Lau is a freelance editor and writer based in Hong Kong. She was previously a staff editor with The International Herald Tribune and The New York Times, as well as arts editor at The South China Morning Post and managing editor at HK Magazine. JoyceLauWriting.com; @JoyceLauNews
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