best of both
looking for was an international curriculum delivered with a Hong Kong experience. So I was happily surprised (albeit with a pang of jealousy now my kids are settled into schools) when I visited HKCA Po Leung Kuk Primary School and uncovered just that – an IB school run by a Hong Kong organisation for Hong Kong and expat families. Bingo! And here’s the best bit – there’s no capital levy, no debenture, and fees are competitive. Po Leung Kuk is a charity organisation that was established 120 years ago with a mission to take care of women and children who had been thrown out of society. Today, the organisation is still running care centers and orphanages here in Hong Kong but it’s also an organisation strongly associated with education in the city, with 113 registered schools and more than 50,000 students within its network. This is a local organisation with Hong Kong roots that go wide and deep. While HKCA Po Leung Kuk Primary School is the first of its schools to offer the PYP (IB primary years program), this international approach is not an entirely new concept within the network. Po Leung Kuk’s Choi Kai Yau School already offers senior students the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma
Many international schools are very British in their ethos - ours is much more of a community school
program in the final two years of school. HKCA Po Leung Kuk Primary School’s international offering is definitely a new proposition for the network, but not without some grounding. HKCA Po Leung Kuk Primary School will offer the International Baccalaureate (IB) Primary Years Program (PYP) which is an English language, inquiry-led framework for children 3-12 years old. Parents researching online will see the school is yet to be accredited as an IB school. It’s important to clarify that children are currently being taught the PYP program, by PYP-experienced teachers, but as a brand new school this formal accreditation has not yet been awarded.
Founding principal David Priest is clear that recruitment for the school’s teaching body has purposefully involved hiring teachers with PYP experience. “This means we can authentically operate using the PYP framework” he says. He is passionate about building an international community. “As an international school, you should have an international faculty. If the majority of the teachers are from one country than that country’s ethos and educational pedagogy tends to dominate.” The experience for students is multicultural, with a Hong Kong skew. According to Priest, the playground language is mostly English, but he also hears Cantonese and Mandarin – reflecting the student mix. “It’s typical, in an international mix of children, that the language they are being taught in the classroom tends to come out into the playground, quite naturally (English is the language of instruction at the school). Of course, there are times when they’ll switch to Chinese. I support that because a lot of research has shown it’s very important for children to have a first language, to learn a second language. Conceptually their mother tongue is their strongest language and we
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