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William Yiu

Hong Kong authorities are expected to provide more incentives to encourage under-enrolled public schools to merge to survive, while announcing housing measures and tax reductions to tackle the falling birth rate in this week’s policy address, the South China Morning Post has learned.
A government source said the policy address by Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu on Wednesday would offer additional incentives to encourage the merger of subsidised schools amid the shrinking student population.
Currently, if a primary school merges with another institution to allow the affected pupils to continue their studies, a one-off allowance of HK$1 million (US$127,500) will be granted to cover additional expenses.
In March, the Education Bureau announced that a record 15 primary schools would not be allowed to operate subsidised Primary One classes for this academic year because they had failed to secure at least 16 pupils.
Among them, eight chose to merge with other schools – which is the most popular option – while four chose to close down after three years, and two opted to operate private Primary One classes. The remaining school is already in the process of merging with another institution.
The survival challenge of schools is expected to become more serious, as the number of babies born from 2021 to 2025, who will be entering Primary One in the coming years, keeps declining and hit a record low last year.
The bureau expects the number of six-year-olds will stand at only 31,500 in 2029, a 16 per cent drop from 37,600 Primary One pupils in public schools this school year.
Jessie Cheung Chok-fong, a consultant at the Subsidised Primary Schools Council and a principal, said schools generally used the current allowance to cover pupils’ extra expenses incurred by the mergers.
“If a school in one district merges with a school in another district, schools have to offer school buses for students to commute, and parents will also be given money to buy a new set of textbooks and school uniforms after joining the new school,” she said.
“More resources are definitely good for schools planning to merge, but schools always look at how much they are given before spending.”
At present, secondary schools that continue to operate Form One classes after a merger will be provided with a one-off allowance of HK$500,000 for each merging level to cover the additional expenses.
Over the past few years, only four government secondary schools and two secondary schools operated by Caritas Hong Kong have chosen the merger option.
The issue of a declining number of Form One students is not as imminent as it is for the primary section, as the local number of births started to fall in 2017.
Secondary schools now have to secure 29 students to operate two Form One classes, or they will face survival risks.

The source said the policy address would also try to boost the birth rate by offering tax incentives and rolling out housing measures, as authorities wanted to avoid depending solely on cash giveaways for families.
Last month, Hong Kong recorded a record-low 29,700 births between mid-2025 and mid-2026, down 15.6 per cent from 35,200 for the same period a year earlier.
The decline in births came despite the government’s introduction of a “baby bonus” scheme in 2023, offering a one-off HK$20,000 cash award to new parents to encourage families to have children.
The scheme was planned for an initial three years.
In June, city leader Lee said the government would conduct a consultation on its slew of pro-baby incentives amid persistently low birth rates, noting that delayed marriage and cultural shifts were limiting the effectiveness of such policies.
He conceded that delayed marriage, driven by career pursuits and postgraduate education becoming more common, had disincentivised couples from having children.
The median age for first marriage among Hongkongers rose from 31.2 years for men and 29.3 for women in 2015 to 32.6 and 31, respectively, in 2025.
He also pointed to changing cultural values, including the decline of the traditional view that children serve as an old-age safeguard and the growing prioritisation of individual aspirations.


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Hong Kong

Education

Source says city leader John Lee will unveil additional incentives to boost births and encourage school mergers in policy address


Source says city leader John Lee will unveil additional incentives to boost births and encourage school mergers in policy address.


Hong Kong to sweeten school merger deals, offer housing measures to lift births

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Source says city leader John Lee will unveil additional incentives to boost births and encourage school mergers in policy address

Source says city leader John Lee will unveil additional incentives to boost births and encourage school mergers in policy address