Are govt subsidies to Hong Kong's private schools fair?
Updated: 2012-11-06 06:32
By Hong Liang(HK Edition)
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In one of the many match-making TV shows on the mainland, a young woman stirred a heated debate on Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter, by insisting that her primary prerequisite for choosing a husband was someone who would unconditionally support her desire to send their child to private school for an "aristocratic" education, irrespective of the cost.
Her blatant show of elitism has apparently got under the skin of many angry people, who went on line to brand her the "stinking snob" or worse. I saw the clip of the show on the Internet. She didn't come across as pushy or offensive, as many of her detractors described in their angry messages.
She just looked like a typical Hong Kong mother who would spare no expense sending her children to private, or, in the case of Hong Kong, international schools for an all-English education. Compared with Hong Kong, the fees charged by the average private school in Shanghai, at around 20,000 yuan a year for primary classes, seem reasonable.
There is of course nothing wrong with sending children to private schools, which are supposed to offer a better environment and superior facilities than government schools that are free. But parents must realize that they will have to pay for the higher quality education for their children, whether that higher quality is real or merely perceived.
Many Hong Kong parents, the majority highly educated professionals, appear to reject such a simple rule of economics as they clamor for bigger government subsidies for private or international schools. We understand that the issue in Hong Kong is complicated by the legacy from the colonial days when the subsidization of schools for children of British expatriates in the civil service and the armed forces was part of the government responsibility.
These schools, grouped under the auspice of the English Schools Foundation (ESF), have become very different since the British left in 1997. They have become truly international with a large contingent of local students, mostly from well-to-do families. It's hard to classify these schools and, for that reason, the question of how far the government should continue subsidizing these schools has become a hotly debated issue.
Then there are the various private schools that cater specifically to expatriate students of different nationalities. It is understood that places in some of these schools are sought after by local parents who plan to send their children abroad for university studies.
I have Hong Kong friends who are sending their children either to ESF schools or other international schools. They told me that they were not happy with the quality of the government schools, partly because of what they considered to be sub-standard English teaching at those schools.
Of course, I am not in a position to question their judgment. But whenever they complained about the high cost of sending their children to the private schools, I felt compelled to remind them that it was their own choice.
The fact is that it's very difficult to produce a convincing argument for subsidizing ESF or any other private schools with public resources, including funding and land grants. We understand that the fees of those schools are already very high for each school to offset the opportunity cost of holding onto a piece of choice real estate in land-scarce Hong Kong. But there is really no way to justify spending taxpayers' money to subsidize the education of the children of expatriates and well-to-do Hong Kong families.
It is also hard for sensible people to take seriously the threat that many professionals, both expatriate and local, would quit their jobs, pack up and leave simply because of the high cost of private education in Hong Kong. They should know that private schools elsewhere are just as expensive, if not more.
These parents are well-educated people who should be urbane enough to know that if you want the prestige and exclusivity, and can afford it, go get yourself a Bentley car. But they should also know that a Bentley is not necessarily that much better than a Volkswagen by the same manufacturer.
The author is a current affairs commentator.
(HK Edition 11/06/2012 page3)