The price of duty [Heather du Quesnay in the SCMP]

ESF's decision to fund two private schools was made with the children and their family in mind
Heather Du Quesnay Dec 09, 2010
There is a curious irony running through the parallel education stories the SCMP has recently featured. One group of schools, in the direct subsidy scheme, has been criticised for misusing funds intended for education by investing in property or risky stocks and shares. Another group, the English Schools Foundation, has been excoriated by a small number of parents for spending its cash on education for children other than their own. To be clear, with the money that is under dispute, the ESF has built new schools offering more than 3,000 places to Hong Kong children whose parents desperately wanted high-quality, English-medium education for their kids. The decisions are 10 years old, and a little history is required. In the late-1990s/early-2000s, Hong Kong was recovering from an economic slump and business was beginning to boom again, a time not unlike today. Chinese families that had spent time overseas to establish residency were returning, bringing with them formidable entrepreneurial skills and children who had forgotten or never learned how to write Chinese characters. New businesses were beginning to move into Hong Kong, lured by the opportunities opened up by a smoother reunification than anyone had dared hope. The pressure for places in English-medium schools was building. At that time, the ESF offered only 11,000 places, compared with the nearly 16,000 (including those in the private independent schools) we have today. There was a need of another kind, too, when in late 2001 the Canadian Overseas International College (not connected with the present Canadian International School) failed, its proprietors fled and the government asked the ESF to take over the school at a week's notice, to safeguard the continuity of education for 380 children. The ESF's executive committee, which then served as its board, saw two things clearly: one was that it had a duty to save a school on which several hundred children depended, and the other was that the students could serve as the core of the new private independent school which it had won government support to sponsor. The school was duly taken over, housed as it was in a dilapidated building in Cheung Sha Wan and named Phoenix. The school thrived and in 2006 its students were transferred to new premises in Ma On Shan. Renaissance College was born. Likewise in 2002, confidence in the future led the ESF to establish a temporary primary school in an old government building in Kwai Chung. Bauhinia School had no government subvention but the executive committee planned, again with far-sightedness, to start a school whose students could form the core of the private independent school it was intending to open in Discovery Bay, again after winning government support for its proposal. And the funding? Well, the government played a part by making sites available for the two schools and paying part of the construction cost (HK$200 million for Renaissance and HK$142 million for Discovery College). But the ESF found the rest (HK$111 million and HK$168 million respectively). Was this the misuse of money that the concerned parents claim? Admittedly, these may not have been the smartest of investment decisions in terms of financial return. But the ESF was not set up to make a profit. We are an educational organisation with a passionate commitment to Hong Kong children. The executive committee of the late '90s saw a way to meet increasing demand and to serve the children of returning Chinese and Asian families and newly arriving businesspeople who would be at the heart of Hong Kong's next wave of prosperity. Every generation of children depends upon the spending decisions of their parents and grandparents. The children who are in our schools today are there only because in the past, the ESF saw fit to construct buildings for those schools, often funding them itself with the cash balances it had built up from the fees of the students then in the system. That is how the economy of education works - the lead-in times are long and an altruistic commitment to the future, to children not yet born, is essential. The deal with the private independent schools is that the schools will repay the ESF's share of the costs. It was recognised from the start that it would take several years before the schools would break even and that the financial return would have to be adjusted to avoid damaging the fledgeling institutions. But it was regarded as essential to establish the principle of repayment from the start and HK$41 million has already been repaid after just four years for Renaissance and three years for Discovery. Yes, the schools are making a loss, but that is being covered by other parts of the Educational Services budget, not by the ESF's subvented budget; the two are separate. As the student rolls build up, so the schools will be able to pay more back and we are confident that the total sum will be repaid within the 20-year period stipulated. If there were no Renaissance and no Discovery College, we would potentially have another 3,000 children on the waiting list to add to the 3,000 who applied for 1,200 places in Year One three months ago. Would that be a better situation for Hong Kong? As far as the ESF is concerned, while we recognise our financial responsibility to our parents and the absolute need to ensure that there is no cross-subsidy from subvented budgets, we see no difference between private independent school students and ESF students - they are all Hong Kong children. Once their parents entrust them to our schools, we owe them the same duty of care and we will not allow political sniping to distract us from the real job: educating the students. Heather Du Quesnay is chief executive officer of ESF [Comment]: Bit of dodgy maths, there, surely? The 3,000 pupils in Renaissance and Discovery wouldn't all be applying for Year One places in ESF junior schools at the same time, would they? There's also a slightly mysterious mention of "Education Services". I suppose Ms du Quesnay must be referring to ESF Educational Services, the wholly owned subsidiary of the ESF that operates the two PIS schools and the ESF kindergartens and provides sports and English language courses.