open day
Community relations
Kate Davies finds out how Hong Kong Academy is keeping its students on their toes.
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Who is God?” “How does the brain work?” “How do bones grow inside your body?” These are the questions on the minds of children, handwritten on post-it notes and stuck to a wall in one of Hong Kong Academy’s kindergarten classrooms. Questions that might make a parent like myself quietly panic, but not the teachers. They encourage kids of all ages to volunteer what they know about subjects, ask what they don’t and then help them find answers on their own. It’s part of a conceptual, inquiry based learning programme that underlies the school’s entire educational ethos.
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The fundamentals of this mission are where the Hong Kong Academy’s story begins. Some 16 years ago, two parents, Teresa Richman and Ben Frankel embarked on a journey to create a place of learning for children who acquired knowledge in ways different to the fixed teaching standards of the day. They set up an environment they felt was inclusive, individual-focused and community-minded. It is a model that the current principal, Stephen Dare, helped grow for a student population that now counts student numbers in the hundreds. From the fledgling kindergarten on Stubbs Road, the school
has moved twice on Hong Kong Island to accommodate the burgeoning student body and is now in its permanent, purpose-built campus in Sai Kung. Today Hong Kong Academy is a fully fledged independent, international nonprofit day school that offers the International Baccalaureate (IB) Primary Years, Middle Years and Diploma programmes. The class sizes are deliberately kept small so as to ensure a low student-toteacher ratio with most having two or more teachers to make sure accelerated learners as well as students needing support are well looked after.