User:Hungwai

= The Shortage of Kindergarten Places in North District =

Background
The Legislative Council amended the immigration ordinance in 2001 after the Court of Final Appeal ruled in favor of Hong Kong-born Chong Fung-yuen, giving the child right of abode despite having mainland parents. The court ruled that Article 24 meant Chinese citizens born in the SAR could enjoy right of abode in the territory, regardless of their parents' immigration status.

Under this situation, more and more mainlanders flock to Hong Kong to give birth, especially the Individual Visit Scheme launched in 2003. Due to more comprehensive and higher quality of kindergarten education in Hong Kong , a lot of mainland parents would like to let their child born in the SAR be educated in Hong Kong.

Moreover, Shenzhen authorities tightened the primary school admission system last year, with only those holding a residency certificate for the city able to attend public schools. A child is born in Hong Kong with no residency in the mainland, so the parents of Hong Kong-born children must pay large sums for private schools if they want their children to study in the mainland.

Therefore, the total number of cross-border students has continued to increase in recent years .More importantly, because of the SAR government without an overall plan of kindergarten places, cross-border students lead to shortage of kindergarten places in North District.

Situation
In recent years, more and more mainland parents let their children receive education in Hong Kong. There are competition between Hong Kong parents and Mainland Parents because the demand and supplies are not balanced. It is commonly known that North District do not have enough places to all children who want to study kindergarten. Last month,some kindergartens started distributing application forms to parents. Because of this reason, many parents bought chairs,foods and tents to queue outside kindergartens. At Sheung Shui Wai Chou Kindergarten, staff distributed the forms on Saturday. But about 300 people were already queuing from midnight on Tuesday. It is noticed that parents are very stressful whether their children can get a place in kindergarten or not. One of the kindergartens in Fan Ling started stopping parents to queue. The principal said that they only offer 75 places to students this year. Therefore, they only distribute 150 application forms to parents who want to apply. Facing this situation, many parents were very disappointed. Because of this situation, agency claimed that they can provide application forms which are included different schools. But the price is expensive. If parents want to get the application forms, they need to pay twenty thousand dollars to agency. (Agency are illegally selling their forms in order to get big profit.)

Kindergarten
At the beginning, kindergartens require parents (both Hong Kong and Mainland parents) lining up for the application form. After the mass media reports the troublesome of parents, more and more kindergartens adopt the online application in order to avoid the argument between Hong Kong parents and mainland parents

Property owners
The property owners raise the rent because of the increasing demand. According to SCMP 'Preschool frenzy could raise Hong Kong rents further' by Candy Chan and He Huifeng,

“two years ago, a 669 sq ft three-room flat at Tsui Lai would be rented for HK$5,000 a month, but prices had since risen nearly 60 per cent to HK$8,000”. That is to say, the rent in North district rockets in recent years since many mainlanders believe living nearby schools causes their children to obtain the places possibly. This trend has expanded to Shatin. Also, some owners even subdivide their flats to make profits.

Hong Kong parents
Parents in Hong Kong are dissatisfied with the arrangement of the kindergartens and Education Bureau in the sense that the former requires parents to line up for the application form and causes them to line up for the form and camp overnight. On the other hand, the latter only maintains that the 241,000 kindergarten places available should be sufficient. At the same time, it is complained that agents hold places in the queue for Chinese parents and cut into the queue. Such unfair incidents make Hong Kong parents be afraid of losing places.

Mainland parents
Some of the Kindergartens use Cantonese as the main medium of interviews .Many mainland parents think that they are discriminated because most of them cannont speak Cantonese.This measure may affect preschoolers’ opportunities of getting the place and violate the principle of the fair.

Government
The Education Bureau introduced six measures in order to solve this problem. These measures can help the parents to reduce pressure since parents do not need to wait outside the kindergartens for a whole night anymore and there will be more place in each kindergarten, which means more pupils can study in it. However, these have not appeased parents or the education sector.
 * 1) Encouraging kindergartens to take local pupils first.
 * 2) Having school distribute unlimited application forms.
 * 3) Offering school distribute application forms online.
 * 4) Limiting parents to registering at one kindergarten rather than several.
 * 5) Adding school places.
 * 6) Aiding parents.

Kindergartens
Since kindergartens are privately run, the government cannot enforce them but just to encourage and advise them. It is difficult to made children admit to schools which are closest to their residential areas become mandatory.

Local parents
Some of the local parents may form different groups like "Mama Club" in order to seek help or ask for suggestion from other parents.They also gather together and go for demonstration to voice out their opinion. They all wore black t-shirt and gather at Sheung Shui. They want to government to carry out free education for 15-years and ensure that every child can have a seat in kindergartens. At the same time they keep lining up for the application form, some of them even quit their job for this or ask other family member to line up.

Non-local parents
Parents from Mainland China will pay for the agency in order to have a seat in Hong Kong's kindergartens. Those agency will help them to hold a seat in those kindergartens. Some of the non-local parents just hire people to line up for them overnight in front of the kindergartens, like the others Hong Kong's parents. Some of them may even buy a fake address from the agency so that they can enhance the probability of getting a seat in the kindergartens.