HONG KONG: The results of Primary One discretionary placements for September 2010 were released yesterday, with fewer than half of applicants offered places.

Among the 20,461 children who have been successfully assigned, 43 percent of them have siblings already at the schools or with parents working in the schools. The rest are selected though the Points System, according to the Education Bureau.

In fact, the success rate of 49.2 percent marked a 12-year low, 0.2 percent lower than last year, said Tang Kwai-tai, chairman of Subsidized Primary Schools Council. Nonetheless, Tang said he believed the rate remains within the normal range. "The previous statistics showed the rate to be around 50 percent in past years," he said.

Anxious parents turned up at schools all over the city early yesterday morning, to learn whether their children had been accepted. Some parents were evidently disappointed.

"It's not unexpected," a mother said disappointedly when departing from a primary school in Kowloon Tong. "Because this is my first child, I don't have other kids in this school," she added. The mother felt it was a highly competitive situation for children to enroll in a favorite primary school at the discretionary places admission stage. She believed the small-class teaching scheme was a major cause.

Tang shared the same view with the mother. The small-class teaching scheme limits admissions, he said. Otherwise applications this year were estimated to be fewer than in other years, as most school-age children applying this year were born in 2003, the year SARS broke out, he said.

Lee Lai Mui, principal of a primary school in Kowloon Tong, did not agree that this year's situation is more competitive than other years. "The admission to the popular primary schools is always very competitive," she said.

Tang said it was difficult to predict how competitive it will be in the future. "Although the birth rate in Hong Kong is rising slowly, we are not sure whether Hong Kong-born mainland children will go back to the mainland for school or not," he said.

For children with no sibling(s) studying or parent(s) working in the school or without good academic performance, who were unable to secure a discretionary place, they will be allocated school places through the central allocation at a later stage. Parents of these children will receive a letter from the Education Bureau in mid-January 2010 to invite them to make choices of schools for central allocation on January 23 or 24.

(HK Edition 11/24/2009 page1)