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3 Fit for Purpose? Why Chinese Families Choose International Schools in Hong Kong Chris Forse In Hong Kong, as in many other major cities throughout Asia, international schools have become the schools of choice for expatriates working there, socalled overseas families who have spent time abroad, and, increasingly, local families as well. Hong Kong has one of the densest concentrations of international schools in the world, which include “genuine” international schools as well as the unique English Schools Foundation (ESF) system that was created in 1967 by the British colonial government to serve the needs of its families. The ESF schools were supported by the government, and, unlike other international schools, they became financially integrated into the public school system, so that their students pay less than half the rate of international schools, even while they have an English-language medium of education with (mostly) native speakers. Together, the international schools and the ESF system illustrate many of the issues that face international education across the globe. Although the ESF schools began with the majority of the students being from British civil service and business families, increasingly the majority are Chinese, occupying something over 50 percent of the spaces, a common phenomenon in international schools as Gordon Slethaug, Eric Jabal, and Martin Schmidt note (Chapters 1, 4, and 5 of this book). Of the Chinese families that take up the school spaces, approximately 10 percent are ethnically Chinese and “purely” local, carrying only Special Administrative Region (SAR) travel documents and never having lived abroad. Another 30 percent of the total enrollment consists of overseas Chinese who went abroad for study, work, or foreign passports, leading up to the handover of rule from the British to the Chinese in 1997. Still another 10 percent are Eurasian, normally with one Chinese parent and with either local or overseas backgrounds. Ch03(P.57-72).indd 59 08/07/2010 12:12 PM 60 Chris Forse These Chinese learners want an international, English-medium education, but, unlike the previous generation of learners in the Hong Kong international schools, they are increasingly interested in studying Chinese and also may wish to take advantage of some of the special learning support that has become a feature of international education. They are also competing for spaces that traditionally have been offered only to expatriates, draining students away from the local school system and simultaneously putting pressure on the local and international schools. This has led to frustration among prospective applicants as well as heated debates among local government administrators. International schools thus enter the arena of local policies, politics, and finances even as they try to globalize and free themselves from those constraints. In this chapter, I wish to take up the issues surrounding these new Chinese learners as they enter the ESF and international schools. Representative case studies In August 2007 I received a phone call, in my capacity as head of Parent and Student Services at the ESF in Hong Kong, from a Mrs Chan. She was calling to inform me that her son James had been offered a place at Bradbury School, one of the ESF’s primary schools. She thanked me for having helped James secure the place. (In truth I had done little more than advise her about how to apply.) She said that, after two years of unhappiness in a local primary school, James now awoke every morning with a positive attitude to attending school. His self-esteem was recovering, and he was comfortable and challenged in a new style of learning in the medium of English. James was a new kind of student, unlike the traditional international students in Hong Kong. The ESF was established in 1967 to provide a liberal style of education, in the medium of English, for those who could benefit from it, though at that time, as Slethaug notes in his chapter, these were assumed to be expatriate, English native speakers, who would be taught by their own kind. Mrs Chan was ethnically Chinese; she met the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) and SAR’s racial criteria — she had a correct name and “shape of eye.” By nationality she was Australian and spoke with a mild Australian accent. She could not read or write Chinese characters, though she could converse in Cantonese, the language of her parents who were from Hong Kong. On arriving in Hong Kong as one of the new generation of Chinese returnees/“expatriates,” she decided to have James educated in...

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