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

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.