Education in Hong Kong has a similar system to that of the United Kingdom, in particular the English education system of Hong Kong was modernized by the British in 1861. The system can be described as extremely competitive by global standards.
School Systems
Culture
The mainstream education system in Hong Kong has often been described as "spoon-fed". Students' survival in the system is essentially placed on heavy rote learning, which is sometimes better suited for exams than for pro-active learning. Cram schools in Hong Kong have also become a popular standard in parallel to regular education. A heavy emphasis is placed on the Ranking systems at an early age. Competition among students are fierce, since job and advanced-school placements are rigorously filtered by rank results.
Point system
Schools in Hong Kong typically have strict codes of discipline. An overwhelming majority of schools employ "Demerit Points Systems" as a formal record of student offences in disciplinary areas. These statistics will appear on a student's report card, and sometimes testimonials on whether he or she can graduate. A typical example of a current institution using a demerit point system is Shatin Tsung Tsin Secondary School.
Capacity
Many primary schools in Hong Kong offer half-day schooling, splitting by AM and PM to handle the demand. The two sessions are usually treated as separate school entities with 2 different headmasters and different sets of staff. To make up for the time of shortened half days, students are sometimes required to attend alternate Saturdays. Most primary schools are gradually moving to full school day systems as government policy aims to phase out half-day schooling over time as resource permits.
Early Education
Pre-school / Nursery / Kindergarten Education
Before Christmas season in 2006, the Legislative Council's finance committee in Hong Kong approved the controversial HK$2 billion pre-school scheme to subsidize early childhood education and to ease the burden of raising children in HK. Under the subsidy plan, parents whose children study in kindergarten will get an education voucher of HK$13,000 per student per year from the 2007-2008 school year, provided the school fees did not exceed HK$24,000 per year for half-day kindergartens or HK$48,000 for whole-day kindergartens.
Primary Education
Primary education in Hong Kong covers a wide curriculum. Core subjects include Chinese, English, and Mathematics with broad emphasis on Music, Physical Education and Arts. Formerly there were 3 knowledge-oriented subjects: Social Studies, Health Education, and Science. In the 1996-1997 academic year the Education Department amalgamated these subjects into the new subject of General Studies[citation needed]. Depending on the religious background of the school, Religious Education or Bible Studies could be incorporated. The teaching medium in most of the local primary schools is Chinese with English as a second language. After the transfer of the sovereignty of Hong Kong in 1997, only a handful of primary schools and secondary schools are able to keep English as the medium of instruction under new government policies. Those schools are generally referred to as English as Medium of Instruction schools (EMI).
Secondary Education
Secondary education in Hong Kong is largely based on the English schooling system, with single-sex education being widespread. In Form 4, most students of grammar schools are required to choose between streams, namely "Science", "Arts" and "Commerce", depending on the school policy. This end of Form 5 leads to Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination (HKCEE). The exam is equivalent to the UK's GCSEs or O-levels exams.
Students obtaining a satisfactory grade in the HKCEE will be promoted to Form 6. The Hong Kong Advanced Level Examination (HKALE) then acts as the de facto university entrance examination akin to the UK's GCE A-levels. At this level streaming is even more rigidly specialized dividing into Mathematics/Engineering stream, Biology/Medical stream or Arts stream for example.
Prerequisites for university admissions include Grade "E" or better in the HKALE Chinese Language and Culture and Use of English subjects. The Joint University Programmes Admissions System (JUPAS) determines admission to tertiary institutions largely based on HKALE results. In addition, students achieving more than 6 'A's in their HKCEEs are eligible to apply for early admissions through the Early Admissions Scheme (EAS) including The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), The University of Hong Kong (HKU) and The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST).
Higher Education
Tertiary Education
With 8 universities and several other tertiary institutions in just one city, tertiary education plays a key role in the education system. Of the 36,660 students who attended the HKALE in 2003, 18,049 (49.2%) of them fulfilled their general entry requirement to their respective university, usually a pass in Chinese Language and Culture and Use of English, plus another two A-level subjects (or one A-level subject and two AS-level subjects). Students who sit for the HKALE first time have a success rate of 75.8%. There are 19 different Advanced Level and 20 different AS-level subjects available[10]. The cost of undergraduate, full-degree, full-time programmes tend to be around HK$40,000 - 50,000 a year, with the cost being higher for engineering and medical students. The reason for this relatively low cost is due to heavy government subsidisation. Being an international city, Hong Kong's tertiary institutions attract many foreign exchange students from US, UK, Switzerland, Canada, Italy, Singapore to name a few.
International Education
International institutions like German Swiss International School and French International School continue to teach with English as the primary language. International school students rarely take Hong Kong public exams. British students take GCSE, IGCSE and A-levels. US students take SATs. Other international student follow International Baccalaureate policies, and enter universities through non-JUPAS direct entry. International students apply on a per school basis, whereas Hong Kong local students have the advantage of submitting 1 application for multiple local universities as a JUPAS applicant.
