Think S’pore’s education system is competitive? Try Hong Kong’s pre-school admissions interview

HONG KONG – Singaporean mother-of-two Mrs Lim used to think Singapore’s education system was competitive – until she moved to Hong Kong in February 2025 and tried to enrol her then 18-month-old daughter in pre-school.

It was then that she came face to face with one of Hong Kong’s notorious cultural norms: nursery admissions interviews of prospective pupils.

“I didn’t know such interviews would start so young,” the homemaker in her 30s, who wanted to be known only by her husband’s surname, told me.

“At the school, we frantically tried to get our kid to wave hi to everyone she met, but she was having none of it,” she said, adding that during the interview, the girl could not complete an animal peg puzzle given to her, although she managed to correctly pick out and stack some coloured blocks.

That wasn’t all.

Mrs Lim, who documented her thoughts about the nerve-racking experience in a series of viral video reels on her Instagram account, unaestheticmom42, said she and her husband appeared to be screened as well.

“On the application form, we even had to fill up our jobs and workplaces. How is that remotely relevant (to our child’s admission),” she said. “As first-time parents and being in a new place, the whole experience was just so stressful.”

Mrs Lim is among scores of parents and their young children who have had to navigate Hong Kong’s ultra-competitive, often-stressful admissions processes for almost every child registering for pre-school.

The vast majority of Hong Kong’s pre-schools are privately run. The schools say the interviews are a tool to better understand the children applying, though parents certainly believe that some kindergartens use such assessments to ensure that only the most academically inclined children are enrolled.

This has spawned an industry of “tuition centres” and costly private tutors to coach babies as young as six months old for interviews. The tutors, typically pre-school teachers, charge a minimum of HK$900 (S$150) per hour.

Three such centres declined to be interviewed, one citing previous bad press. But their brochures and websites state that they offer one-to-one training for children by pre-school teachers, and claim to have strong track records of being able to help the toddlers gain admission into the city’s most prestigious pre-schools.

Much debated process

The admissions practice has long sparked debate among parents, educators and psychologists, who have raised concerns that it pigeonholes children too early on in life, perpetuates social inequalities, and reinforces narrow academic definitions of success. It can also traumatise very young children.

Yet, it remains in place today after more than two decades, even as dozens of kindergartens have had to shut in recent years due to the city’s persistently low birth rates.

Hong Kong parent Carmen Tsui said her three-year-old daughter was rejected by two pre-schools out of the eight they applied to after going through the interview process.

“One school, which is known to accept only ‘excellent’ pupils, asked my daughter pretty challenging questions,” said Ms Tsui, who is in her 30s and working in accounting.

The toddler, aged only about 2½ then, was shown a picture and asked where the child in the picture was, what he was doing, and what his parents could do if he got lost – skills more typically assessed in primary school oral examinations.

Ms Tsui added: “My husband, who was with our daughter, said the interviewer rushed her to answer the questions, sternly telling her that they were running out of time and causing my girl to become very nervous and to drop her head in fear.”

Her daughter was rejected by the kindergarten following that interview. She is now enrolled in another pre-school in Sham Shui Po, one of the eight she interviewed for.

Ms Tsui said she did not sign her daughter up for an interview course as she didn’t want to put such stress on her so early in life.

“We took her to playgroups to socialise her, and prepared her for pre-school by teaching her to say her own name and address, how to feed and relieve herself, and the basic ABCs and 123s. I feel that this should be sufficient for a child her age.”

Not age appropriate?

Teacher James Allen, a Briton who has taught English at pre-schools in Hong Kong for four years, said he does not believe that admissions interviews for toddlers are necessary or age-appropriate.

But their objectives have also changed, he said, as the low birth rates mean that schools no longer have as many choices as before over their pupil intake.

“The interview process nowadays is more for the school to get an idea of the quality of the children coming in so that we can decide the class sizes and which class to assign them to,” said Mr Allen, 31.

Although he is not involved in his kindergarten’s admissions interviews, he said the process was focused “not so much on academic ability as on how the kids behave and interact”, including whether they display signs of independence such as being able to feed themselves, put on their shoes, or tell someone they need to use the bathroom.

“There’s value in knowing who’s coming into your school, even if you’re already planning to accept the kids regardless of their interview performance,” he said.

Mr Allen told me that pupils’ parents are assessed as well.

“If the parents appear difficult or have unreasonably high standards, then the school might reject them, as they could take up a lot of staff time with their personal requests,” he said.

‘Privilege over potential’

Psychologist Adrian Low said Hong Kong’s commercialised, market-driven educational landscape creates “inherent inequities where the system essentially selects for privilege rather than potential”.

“Because children from affluent families have access to interview coaching, enrichment classes and developmental support that directly improve their interview performance, socio-economic disparities can manifest as ‘readiness’ differences,” Dr Low, chairman of the Hong Kong Association of Psychology, told me.

Pre-school admissions interviews – especially those that select for academic readiness – are “generally not developmentally appropriate” as children aged two or three are still developing their basic cognitive, language and social-emotional skills at vastly different rates, he added.

Parents could lower stress over the process by first managing their own anxiety so it does not carry over to their offspring, the psychologist suggested. They could also frame school visits as play dates and rehearse interview-like situations with their children through play.

“The current system places inappropriate pressure on our youngest learners and their families,” he said.

“We need broader conversations about what we value in education and whether early academic selection serves children’s best interests, or if it simply perpetuates social stratification… Meaningful change will require systemic reform beyond individual school policies.”

Singapore school experience

While nursery admissions interviews may not be common in Singapore, entry to the preparatory years (PY) programme of the Ministry of Education-supported Singapore International School (Hong Kong) (SISHK) does require assessments as standard practice in Hong Kong.

The school – which accepts children of diverse nationalities from three years and eight months old – uses the assessments to understand each child’s individual growth and school readiness.

Ms Joanne Tsang, SISHK’s executive director of the PY programme, said the school assesses how the children interact with their parents, their language and self-help skills, physical development and readiness to learn, among other things.

“During the assessment, rather than focusing on reasons to reject an applicant, we prioritise identifying the positive attributes of each child,” said Ms Tsang, a Hong Konger raised in Canada, who has been with the school for 28 years.

“Specifically, we look for children who are happy, curious, confident, sociable and school-ready,” she said, adding that there was no need for parents to send their children for courses to prepare for the school’s admissions interview.

SISHK’s assessment comprises a video submission and a face-to-face meeting. The school does not generally interview parents.

Ms Tsang said one of the key goals of the PY programme is to ensure that children are equipped with the essential skills and dispositions needed for a smooth transition to Primary 1 in the school, where Singapore’s national curriculum is implemented.

Singapore citizens and permanent residents get “special consideration for admission” into the school, which offers a through-train programme up to the pre-university levels.

Mrs Lim, whose daughter is now two, has not considered registering her child at SISHK as she is still too young to qualify for the school’s PY programme.

She did not enrol the girl at the school where she had gone for an interview either, although she passed the interview.

Instead, she enrolled her daughter at a Montessori nursery near their home in Ap Lei Chau, which focuses on self-directed learning. It is also among the rare few pre-schools that do not require an interview.

“Nursery admissions interviews are frankly quite a turn-off,” said the mother.

“Although now I’ve learnt that they are a cultural thing and the norm in Hong Kong, just knowing that schools are conducting such interviews already makes me feel that they are not the right school for my child.”