Students cross the line to catch a class act

 

Frustrations grow

That means crossing the border for education. However, the process is problematic, with a long commute, eating on the move, less sleep and, for many children, no after school activities. Moreover, some of the children find the cultural and language barriers frustrating.

"We would not go back to Shenzhen even if the local public schools could accept us," said the grandmother of a young girl as they approached the checkpoint between the two cities. The woman, who only gave her surname as Pi, said neither her daughter nor her son-in-law is a Hong Kong resident.

Pi had just one aim when she traveled from her hometown in Heilongjiang province in the far northwest to the very south of the country -

to escort her granddaughter to a kindergarten in Hong Kong every day.

The roundtrip takes more than four hours, but "it doesn't matter", according to Pi, who said the schools inHong Kong will give her granddaughter "a better education and, therefore, a better future".

"The English lessons in Hong Kong's kindergarten are of a far higher level than those in Shenzhen's primary schools," she said, adding that linguistic skills will be an important advantage in the search forwork later in life.

Speaking with a strong northeastern accent, Pi said she doesn't understand Cantonese, the dominant language in Hong Kong, but her granddaughter speaks it "very well". Unlike many of her mainland peers, the 4-year-old attends several after school activities."So she can establish close relationships with local children," Pi said.

Zhou Jianfeng, the founder of Siyuan, an educational NGO in Shenzhen that helps cross-border students, said quality of education, rather than cost, is the main reason parents' choose to send their children to Hong Kong schools.

He said grade three, primary school students in Hong Kong have a vocabulary equal to that of students in Shenzhen's middle high schools.

Another factor is that children educated in Hong Kong have a far higher chance of being admitted to the city's universities than children at the same level who were educated on the mainland, he said.

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