Schools

I have just received a job in Hong Kong.

I've read that there are government schools with english as medium of instruction, but do not have any info on this. Does anyone have some info?

I have two small kids, 3 and 6 years old.

I think what you read is referring to the English Schools Foundation. As I understand it, it is not quite governmental, but has strong agreements with the government.


http://www.esf.edu.hk/index.aspx


Of course, you also have quite a few purely private schools with English instruction.


For the 3 year old, you would probably go with a pre-school like Woodland ( http://www.woodlandschools.com/new/home.htm ) which also teaches in English.

You may want to consider negotiating with your company for them to pay school fees and school bus fees. The mindset at local schools is very different to the mindset of western schools from my experience (NET teacher at 4 HK schools, mum of kids attending about 10 schools in 4 western countries). If you go down that path are you ready for lots of homework for your children at 3 and 6 years old?


ESF have many xpat kids. International schools such as American, Canadian, Australian, Korean, Japanese, French etc are usually more expensive than ESF. Wiki have a good list http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_international_schools_in_Hong_Kong


If you wander around the www.edb.gov.hk site (education hk) you will eventually find a list of English Medium Instruction schools.


If you do a history search here and on parenting forum you will find the topic has been heavily debated.

Thanks for the info.

Now for the next question. Other than schooling and housing, what are the major cost of living expenses like? Electricity, water bills, or anything else?

I know this must have been covered in this forum before, but I want to make sure there isn't anything that I'm not aware of. Please be patient with me. :)

Electricity is pretty reasonable, it spikes during the summer when you are running air conditioning, I live in a 2500 SFT house with four air cons, one in each bedroom and the living room and the bill comes in roughly at about HK$2,500 max a month or about US$300 during that period. Have no idea what my water bills are like, for some reason my landlord sorts that out. Though you are asking other than, I think housing needs to be mentioned, it is of course going to be your number one expense, but renting is pricey in Hong Kong compared to the rest of the world, if you are looking for over 1500 SFT expect to pay over US$7,000 per month for something that is not that decent compared to what you would get for the same money is most cities in the US or Europe with the exception of Manhattan and the sky is the limit. If you have been offered a job I would definitely factor in accommodation in to your calculation, i.e. if you can, negotiate a housing allowance with your employer, and if you cannot then whether you don't mind living in whatever housing you can afford

NB, when talking about rents, I am referring to the island, there are of course deals to be found if you expand your search and don't mind living off the island, or indeed on the island itself if you don't mind really old buildings, but those are few and far between and usually aren't on the market for very long