With its total fertility rate falling to the lowest in the world, Hong Kong is seeing over half of its school-age children and their parents overjoyed at gaining admission to their "first-choice" schools. However, the structural decline in the school-age population is also increasing the pressure on many schools to avoid closure. This article is from the WeChat public account: Caijing Magazine , author: Jiao Jian, editor: Su Qi, cover image: author's photo.

November 24th marked the release of the results of the discretionary allocation of Primary One places in Hong Kong. The announcement of these results revealed that the number of eligible children applying had fallen below 40,000, reflecting a structural decline in the school-age population and sparking renewed attention to the declining birth rate and its solutions.

This round of admissions results pertains to Primary One students who will enroll in September 2026. According to the latest data released by the Hong Kong Education Bureau on November 21, a total of 37,581 students applied for discretionary places this year, a decrease of 4,200 students compared to the same period last year, a drop of approximately 10%. The Bureau also estimates that the local Primary One population of 6-year-olds will continue to decline from 48,600 this year to only 34,100 by 2030, an overall decrease of nearly 30%. By district, the Wan Chai, Yau Tsim Mong, Eastern, Tsuen Wan, and Central and Western districts in Hong Kong saw relatively larger declines, ranging from 42.8% to 55.6%.

Fewer than 38,000 primary school students applied for relevant places, marking the first time in nearly 30 years that the number has fallen below 40,000. Affected by this record low, approximately 19,000 local primary school students were admitted this year, achieving a success rate of 52.3%, a year-on-year increase of 2.9 percentage points and the highest since 2006.

Specifically, 19,656 primary school students will be allocated places during the discretionary school allocation phase, including 9,477 hereditary students, a decrease of 1,167 compared to the previous year; the remaining 10,179 students will be allocated places through a points-based system. Therefore, the success rate of discretionary school allocation is 52.3%, marking the first time since 2007 that the local figure has exceeded 50%.

In Hong Kong, the government provides 12 years of free primary and secondary education through the public school system. However, due to the large number of school sponsoring bodies, the primary school admission system and procedures remain relatively complex. For example, during the primary school "discretionary allocation" phase, all public or subsidized primary schools (collectively known as "government-subsidized primary schools," accounting for approximately 90% of the total number of schools in the area) allocate half of their places. Each student can only apply to one primary school, but applications are not restricted by district.

The core factor in primary school admissions at this stage lies in the competition rate of the schools they apply to. The main evaluation factors include "mandatory admission" and "quota admission." The former refers to students who, for various reasons, must be admitted to the school, and their number can reach up to one-third of the enrollment quota in some schools. Taking the aforementioned "hereditary students" as an example, this involves students who have older siblings attending the school, or whose parents work at the school.

According to the procedure, parents of children who have been granted a place through the self-allocation system must complete the registration process at the relevant school before the end of November. Parents of students who have not been granted a place through the self-allocation system or who only intend to participate in the unified placement process must complete the school selection process through an electronic platform or placement center in mid-to-late January of the following year.

While more than half of the local primary school students and their parents are delighted to have their children enrolled in their "first choice" schools, the question of whether the structural decline in the school-age population will continue and how to address it has become a core topic of heated discussion in the local education sector in recent years.

The Hong Kong SAR government's previously estimated figure for the local six-year-old school-age population. (Source: Hong Kong SAR Government Statistics)

This is mainly related to the nearly decade-long decline in the number of babies born in Hong Kong. In 2014, the number of babies born there was 62,000, which dropped to 56,000 by 2017. With the global COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the number of live births in Hong Kong fell below 40,000 in 2021, reaching only 38,684. In 2022 and 2023, 32,950 and 33,288 babies were born respectively.

In 2022, Hong Kong's total fertility rate (the average number of children a woman gives birth to in her lifetime) fell to a historic low of 0.701, surpassing South Korea (0.8 that year) to become the lowest in the world for the first time in the World Bank's database. In 2023, according to the United Nations Population Fund's "State of World Population 2023" report, Hong Kong's total fertility rate was also only 0.8, still the lowest in the world, lower than South Korea (0.9) , Singapore (1.0) , Japan (1.3) , etc.

2024 was a pivotal year for Hong Kong, marking the end of a two-year decline in its birth rate. A total of 36,767 babies were born in Hong Kong that year. According to the Hong Kong SAR government, one of the main reasons for this phenomenon was a series of "birth-stimulating" measures introduced in 2023, including newborn baby bonuses, raising the maximum deduction for tax related to residence, priority allocation for subsidized sale units, and priority allocation for public housing.

Under the "Newborn Baby Incentive Scheme," the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region will provide a cash incentive of HK$20,000 to each newborn baby born to eligible parents for a period of three years. This measure has generated considerable discussion locally because it marks the first time Hong Kong has used direct cash handouts to encourage childbirth.

Detailed data subsequently released by the Office of the Deputy Secretary for Administration of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government showed that among the 36,767 babies born in Hong Kong that year, 31,708 eligible parents applied for the incentive; and as of the end of June 2025, the Hong Kong SAR Government had received a total of 49,567 eligible applications and had disbursed incentives to 48,984 applicants, with a total disbursement of approximately HK$979 million.

Nevertheless, according to the latest statistics released by the Hong Kong SAR government, Hong Kong's total fertility rate in 2024 will only be 0.841, still far below the 2.1 level required for population replacement. A local survey also showed that among respondents aged 19 to 29, only about 23.27% expressed a desire to have children, one of the lowest levels in the world.

Therefore, although the number of newborns has briefly shown a certain trend of stabilizing and rebounding, it is still less than 40,000 per year and may continue to maintain a low total number of births. This has increased the pressure on many local schools to operate normally in the coming years and avoid being "shut down (closed down or merged) ".

This is partly due to the decline in the number of applicants in recent years, as some local parents may choose not to participate in the aforementioned discretionary allocation of school places and instead choose international schools or send their children to study abroad. Given the increasingly limited number of newborns, the increase or decrease in the proportion of these school-age children is considered one of the core factors affecting the relative availability of primary school places in the area.

On the other hand, a key factor making it difficult for local schools to grasp specific student numbers also includes a series of talent attraction schemes launched by the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region in recent years. Their children can attend relevant schools in Hong Kong according to these policies, which introduces variables into the number of participants in the allocation process, making it difficult to predict trends for the next few years.

A recent study by Song Enrong, Visiting Professor of Economics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, based on data from the Hong Kong SAR government, also pointed out that from the implementation of talent attraction policies in 2023 to the end of June 2025, a period of two and a half years, as many as 430,000 people arrived in Hong Kong through the seven talent schemes, including 220,000 talents and 210,000 dependents. However, during this period, Hong Kong's total population decreased rather than increased, from a historical peak of 7.53 million in mid-2023 to 7.52 million in mid-2025.

According to an industry insider working in the education sector between Shenzhen and Hong Kong, who spoke to Caijing magazine, at this stage, the children of talents from the mainland who come to Hong Kong to study tend to concentrate on attending upper primary or secondary schools, with fewer entering primary one. "In the short term, this is partly because some talents need to find work and settle down in Hong Kong before having children or moving their entire families to Hong Kong; in the medium to long term, the number of primary school students is expected to increase to some extent."

Chen Shuyi, chairperson of the local subsidized primary school principals' association, publicly stated that expecting to completely fill the student population gap through the children of high-achieving students is "a bit of a pipe dream." In recent years, the local education community has been consulting with the education department on various methods to alleviate the student enrollment crisis, including accelerating the implementation of comprehensive small-class teaching and reducing the number of classes in some large schools.

With the number of students applying for self-allocation for school placement dropping by nearly 10% within a year, some schools have stated that they are "mentally prepared" for the continued decrease in the number of school-age children and will use various methods to attract students. They also hope that education-related departments can provide as much assistance as possible to reduce the impact of class reductions that could "kill schools." Districts such as Tsing Yi, Southern District, and Tin Shui Wai in Hong Kong may be among the most affected.

Chan Suk-yee called for new policies to be introduced in Hong Kong to increase the number of students, arguing that the birth rate is a "passive" factor and that relevant schools should apply to expand their enrollment of "little overseas students."

This article is from the WeChat Official Account: Caijing Magazine , author: Jiao Jian, editor: Su Qi.