HK School Confessions Ep. 2: A Mom of Two on Consultants, Homework Wars, and the Interview Horror Stories

Welcome to HK School Confessions, where Hong Kong parents say the quiet part out loud about kindergarten admissions — the money, the politics, the moments that made them question the whole system. Nobody’s named. Everybody’s honest.

Today: a mom of two who budgeted five figures for a school consultant, never actually hired one, and whose husband totally wasn’t prepared for what happened during circle time.

Here’s what she told me.

Interview Horror Story

At one PN interview, the rule was one parent, one child in the room. Her husband went alone with their daughter. In case you haven’t heard, the rumour is that it’s an advantage for the dad to go, as it shows both parents are invested in their kid’s education.

While they waited, he noticed another mom who seemed lost, and — being the helpful sort — coached her through what to expect: interact with your child, engage, that kind of thing.

Then came circle time, the group portion where several families are observed together. That same mom apparently tried to make his daughter cry. He called his wife the second he left the building, completely floored. Neither of us has a satisfying explanation for why someone would do that.

The honest read is that admissions anxiety in Hong Kong runs hot enough that a small number of parents start treating the room as a competition against the other kids in it, not just an assessment of their own child.

The playgroup pipeline, and the exception to it

Ask around and you’ll hear the same insider logic: the playgroup you pick basically pre-selects the kindergarten. In her network, Arts Plus feeds into Victoria CWB. ITT feeds into Braemar Hill. Victoria Playpark feeds straight into the Victoria network. By the time you’re filling out kindergarten applications, a lot of the real decision already happened at the playgroup stage, years earlier.

Except that’s not the whole story. She applied to one of her shortlisted schools just before the deadline, with no playgroup attendance at all, and still got in. The feeder pipeline is real, and it does shorten the odds — but it’s a tailwind, not a hard requirement. Tbf though, she said she was the only one in her class to have taken that route!

Homework

The homework workload swings hard by school. HKIS skips it entirely until age six. Victoria assigns five short pieces a day — about two minutes each on paper, though budget a full hour to actually sit with your kid and get him to focus. SIS moves it onto an iPad around age eight. VSA, which she described as “homely,” leans harder into Chinese-language homework than most of the others on her list.

Truly bilingual schools

“Bilingual” gets used loosely, and it doesn’t mean the same thing at every school. In her opinion, the only truly bilingual international schools are VSA, CIS, SIS, and ISF. Everything else is English first, Mandarin second.

The cost of getting in

A consultant quoted her HK$30,000 to HK$60,000 — before a cent of tuition — just to advise on which kindergartens to apply to and help with the paperwork and prepare the portfolio. She did the free consultation but never hired one. Instead, she leaned on friends who’d already been through the process and did the portfolio herself, and both of her kids got into their dream school.

Bonus $$ tip: instead of hiring a helper and a driver, she hired a dedicated helper-driver specifically for school runs and taking care of the kids around the school schedule. For a two-income household whose kids are attending tons of activities (and parking is included in rent!), that might be a worthwhile alternative to taxi-ing everywhere.

Or, if HK$60,000 for a stranger’s opinion sounds unhinged, my $68 playbook is starting to look like a steal.

Class sizes, curriculum extras, and the stuff you can’t Google

KCS runs 40 kids to two teachers. On paper, that ratio sounds like a red flag. In her experience, the teachers were “saints” — constant updates, nothing lost in the shuffle.

What she’d tell you now

Get clear on your non-negotiables before you start touring. For her, it was genuine bilingualism and a nurturing environment, full stop — everything else was negotiable. She deliberately didn’t prioritize a no-homework school, because she believes in 先苦後甜 (a little hardship now pays off later), which is a values call worth making explicitly rather than backing into by accident. The other big piece of advice — don’t miss the deadlines.

Her honest reality check, now that she’s through it — there’s a lot of fear-mongering around HK schools. Parents treat this like a life-or-death sort, agonizing over waitlists, consultants, playgroup pipelines. Looking back, her take is simpler: it’s a game. Learn the rules, play it calmly, stop panicking.

Closing thought

None of that makes the consultant fees less real, or the interview-day politics less unhinged. It just means you can know the rules and stories going in — which is the whole point of writing this down.

If you want more of these, follow along on Instagram — this is part of an ongoing series. And if you want the fuller playbook, that’s what the full guide walks through, section by section.

One more thing — if you want a break from admissions anxiety, my free newsletter covers the fun part of parenting in this city: what’s on for HK families every weekend, delivered every Friday, zero waitlists involved.