Currently the State system for education in Hong Kong derives a great deal from the equivalent British education system; which is unsurprising when you consider Hong Kong was colonized by the British until 1997.  Reformists are seeking to amend the secondary and tertiary education systems at the moment and move for an adoption of American based teaching methods but as yet any reform is still at the discussion stage.

The newly arrived children of expatriate parents who have jobs in Hong Kong can be integrated into the State education system in Hong Kong where the primary teaching language is Chinese and the secondary language is English.  Alternatively parents can send their children to a fee paying international school where the primary teaching language is usually English and the secondary language, if taught, depends on the choice of the school and may be French or German for example.

Education in Hong Kong begins with non-compulsory attendance at kindergarten of which the Special Administrative Region has in excess of 750 - some kindergartens are subsidised by the government and some are purely fee paying and all now have to have a fixed minimum percentage of fully qualified teaching staff to ensure children receive the best educational grounding possible. 

The education system in Hong Kong is therefore quite strict even from a very early age, and criticism has been vociferously articulated in the past because children in Hong Kong who enter the State education system tend to be spoon fed facts, figures and ideas which they are expected to learn rather than intuit, and then repeat rather than explore and this method of teaching has led some opponents to suggest that children in Hong Kong are actively taught rather than passively learning and developing.

After kindergarten children attend primary school for six years of compulsory education in a very broad range of subjects and are required to take a series of exams in their final year which will determine which secondary school they attend.  These examinations result in the banding of children in secondary schools in Hong Kong which some opponents of the system criticise for being discriminatory where as exponents of the system state quite clearly that all children benefit from being taught according to their abilities.

Children either attend secondary schools in Hong Kong for five or seven years and after three years they choose to follow either an arts and humanities education program or a science stream before taking the Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examinations in their fifth year which are the equivalent of the British GCSE.  Those who do well in these exams stay on at school for a further two years of education in Hong Kong before taking the Hong Kong Advanced Level Examinations which are similar to the British A levels.

Students who achieve high marks at this stage and who passed their English and Chinese Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examinations in the fifth year of secondary school earn the right to go on to study at tertiary level.  There are a number of universities, specialist colleges and vocational training centers in Hong Kong that teach, train and educate international students as well as students from Hong Kong and mainland China.

As is almost always the case in communities with a large number of expatriates there are international schools in Hong Kong for newly arrived children which means that those planning on living and working in Hong Kong have a wealth of choice of quality educational establishments in Hong Kong to choose from - including the American Hong Kong International School, Australian, Canadian, Norwegian, French, Korean, Japanese, Singaporean, Chinese, German/Swiss International Schools and a handful of schools teaching the British national curriculum such as Discovery Bay and the Hong Lok Yuen School.

Whichever criticism the system of State education in Hong Kong endures, the State still manages to educate all able citizens to a very high standard and ensure that Hong Kong children have an excellent educational grounding for life.