‘This Drop Came So Quickly’: Shrinking Schools Add to Hong Kong Exodus
By Vivian Wang, 10/11/21, NY Times

HONG KONG — Long before the school year began, Chim Hon
Ming, a primary school principal in Hong Kong, knew this
year’s student body would be smaller. The city’s birthrate
had already been falling, and families were increasingly
frustrated by Hong Kong’s strict pandemic restrictions
and the political turmoil.

Even he was not prepared for the extent of the exodus.
When school started last month in his district of western
Hong Kong Island, the first-grade classes were about 10%
smaller than the previous year’s — a decrease of
over 100 students.

“This drop came so quickly,” Mr. Chim said.

As Hong Kong has been battered by two years of upheaval,
between the pandemic & a sweeping political crackdown from
Beijing, many of the consequences have been immediately
visible. Businesses have shuttered, politicians have been
arrested, tourists have disappeared. One major change is
just coming into focus: some residents’ determination
that the city is no longer where they want to raise
their children.

Last year, Hong Kong experienced a population drop of 1.2%,
its biggest since the govt began keeping records in the 60s.
From July 2020, when China imposed a national security law,
thru the following July, over 89,000 people left the city
of 7.5 million, according to provisional govt data.

The number is likely to grow. Both times the government
updated its provisional data for the past two years, the
number of departing residents more than doubled.

Officials haven't said how many of those departures were
students. But they've offered at least one metric: Hong
Kong’s primary schools will have 64 fewer first-grade
classes this year than last, acc. to stats released by
the Education Bureau late last month after an annual
pupil head count.

The figures seem to confirm a trend that educators have
warned about for months. A survey in May by the city’s
largest teachers’ union found that 30% of primary schools
polled had seen over 20 students withdraw. (The union,
which was pro-democracy, recently disbanded under govt
pressure.) Another survey in March by a pro-Beijing union
found that 90% of kindergartens had lost students, with
over half of principals citing overseas moves as a reason.

Administrators say the rate has accelerated since then,
with some losing as much as 15% of their students after
a summer of emigration. While many of the first-grade
class cuts were planned in the spring, the bureau ordered
that 15 more be trimmed after the September head count.

“They prefer their children to have more freedom of speech
& to have more balanced education,” John Hu, an immigration
consultant, said of parents. Mr. Hu said his business
surged after the security law was enacted, and families
with children made up about 70% of clients.

The exodus of residents has cut across society. Hong Kong
already faced a doctor shortage, & in the 12 months ended
in August, 4.9% of public hospital doctors & 6.7% of
nurses had quit, many to emigrate, acc. to the hospital
authority’s chairman. Residents leaving Hong Kong withdrew
$270 million from the city’s mandatory retirement plan
between April & June, the largest amount in at least
7 years, govt stats show.

The education sphere is both a victim and a driver
of the departures.

Beginning this academic year, officials have pledged to
instill obedience thru mainland-China-style “patriotic
education.” Subjects as varied as geography & biology must
incorporate material on national security. Kindergartners
will learn the offenses under the security law. Teachers
accused of sharing subversive ideas can be fired.

Anne Sze, a teaching assistant at a school, learned about
those changes in March, during a staff meeting. The
principal described how all subjects going forward would
include lessons on loving China, Ms. Sze, 46, said.

Until then, Ms. Sze, who had grown disillusioned with the
political atmosphere in Hong Kong, had taken preliminary
steps toward emigration but had no concrete plans. But
after that meeting, she imagined her own sons, 8 & 11,
going thru similar “brainwashing,” as she called it.

She & her husband hurriedly applied for special visas
that Britain is offering to Hong Kongers in response to
the security law. In August, they left.

“If I didn’t have kids, I may not see the urgency,” she
said. But “the education system is not the same as before.
That’s the main reason I have to go.”

Govt officials have brushed off concerns about a general
exodus, noting that Hong Kong has always been an inter-
national city with a transient population. But even they
have acknowledged the blow to schools. Kevin Yeung, the
city’s education secretary, said last month that it was
a “fact” that “there are many people choosing to leave
Hong Kong.”

The changes have perhaps been most obvious at Hong Kong’s
most-prestigious educational institutions, as families
with the means to leave have rushed to do so.

In the past, a good part of Julianna Yau’s job involved
needling admissions offices at Hong Kong’s elite inter-
national schools. Ms. Yau, the founder of Ampla Education,
an admissions consultancy, would ask if they had any
open spots, or about the length of the waiting list.

Recently, the inquiries have flowed in the other
direction. Did she have any clients interested in applying?
“It’s quite different now,” Ms. Yau said. “There has been
a wave of students going to the U.K. in the past year.”

That wave has also dented the market for debentures,
payments that parents can make to international schools
to gain priority in the cutthroat admissions process.
Some schools limit the number of debentures they offer,
creating a secondary market with sometimes astronomical
values.

They’re still astronomical — but a little less so.
Debentures for one well-known school, Victoria Shanghai
Academy, fetched about $640,000 per student in 2019,
according to KC Consultants Limited, a company that
trades secondhand debentures. Now, they are available
for about $510,000 each.

The exodus is not limited to expensive international
schools. Last month, the pro-Beijing teachers’ union,
which represents many educators at local schools,
petitioned the government to freeze teacher hiring.
It cited “the education sector’s panic” about the
“severe crisis of class reductions.”

Mr. Hu, the immigration consultant, said the new special
visa route to Britain might be drawing families who
typically could not afford to move abroad. Historically,
many Hong Kongers have used investment visas, which can
require millions of dollars in assets, he said. The new
route requires only that arrivals be able to support
themselves for six months.

“I think this issue is common for parents: If they have
the financial capacity to move abroad, I think they
would,” Mr. Hu said.

Hong Kong also saw a surge of departures in the years
before 1997, when Britain returned control of the
territory to China. But many of those migrants were
affluent residents who secured foreign passports as
“insurance” against Communist rule while still traveling
often to Hong Kong. Many eventually returned full time.

The new immigration pathways have more-stringent residency

requirements, making it more likely that the current
departures will be permanent, Mr. Hu said.

School administrators have been left scrambling to
recruit students from other schools in the city. Dion
Chen, the principal of a secondary school that lost about
50 out of 1,000 students over the past year, said he had
filled about half those vacancies.

He has also focused on the less tangible work of
supporting the students who remain. His school has intro-
duced more check-ins with students and given out small
back-to-school gifts, partly because admins worried about
the emotional toll on those whose friends had left.

Mr. Chen noted that more departures were likely to come,
especially once the pandemic subsided and travel
restrictions eased. “I don’t think it’s the bottom
of the valley yet,” he said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/11/world/asia/hong-kong-population-drop.html