More NEW schools in Hong Kong! YK Pao and ESF are Expanding.

Two more established school operators have announced their expansion plans. YK Pao will be opening its first school in Hong Kong and ESF are opening (and closing) kindergartens.

YK Pao in Shanghai

YK Pao School is a well-known, highly reputable school (and brand) established in 2007 in Shanghai and opening in Hong Kong! The school is named after Sir YK Pao. YK, a banker in Shanghai who became the biggest ship owner in the world in the 1970s. 

It’s a family affair: Anna Pao-Sohmen, YK's daughter, founded the non-profit school with her son, Phillip Sohmen. Anna has a long list of accolades, including former chairman of the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts. She is married to Austrian, Helmut Sohmen, former chairman of BW Group, retired in 2014. He was also a legislator and managing director of Dragonair.

Philip Sohmen, their son, is the co-founder and deputy chairman of YK Pao School in Shanghai. Known for his hands-on approach, he usually refers to himself as the “Chief Janitor”. 

Philip graduated from Eton College, Oxford University and Stanford University. He is also the co-founder of the Shanghai International Youth Orchestra and the four-time world champion professional sailing team, ChinaOne, Ningbo. 

The school in Shanghai recently recruited Iain Kilpatrick as Executive Headmaster. With a long career in the UK, he made a big move to Pao School. He will not be leaving to head up the Hong Kong school.

That’s the background - now to the school in Hong Kong - it will be on the site of the old Kowloon Junior School on Rose Street, Ho Man Tin. The school was one of many that bid for the site last year and, after winning, is opening sooner than expected, but not in the premises they were awarded.

The premises at Rose St comprise an old building (65 years) with room for at least 480 students. So, an extensive renovation project will be undertaken of the existing building, plus the addition of a second building to be able to offer G1-9 on the same site. If the building project goes to plan (which they almost never do!), they'll open at Rose St in Sep 2028. 

So, in the meantime, they'll be operating in Kowloon East at 8 Shung Shan Street, Yau Tong which, incidentally, is the site vacated by Inno Secondary School, a private school in Hong Kong that was suspended by the EDB in July 2025 due to serious issues, including a poor financial situation, failing to pay staff, providing an unsanitary dormitory, and collaborating with mainland agencies for unauthorized courses.

YK Pao school is very much an East meets West (as corny as that sounds); I imagine it's as close to an ISF as we're going to get.

On their website, they say:

“At the same time as we value Chinese traditions and culture, we prepare our students for a worldly outlook – we nurture their creativity and equip them with the best skills and competencies to lead in this modern age of knowledge. More importantly, we help students develop a healthy balance of work and personal interests, mental and psychological stamina, and strength of character to make informed decisions in our complex and ever-changing world.

Pao School is a non-profit school sustained by tuition income. While the small educator-student ratio and highly-qualified educators require high tuition fees, we endeavour to raise funds in order to make this education accessible to talented but underprivileged students. We hope that through the Pao School experience, our students will learn to give back to society in different ways.”

They’ll be offering PYP and MYP. For PYP, it will be roughly 50/50 Chinese (Putonghua)/English following more of an immersion model rather than a bilingual one. Again, appearing similar to ISF. For MYP, the balance will be weighted in favour of English with roughly 60% in English and the rest in Chinese.

The Rose St campus is an international school, meaning they need to enrol at least 70% of students with a foreign passport. For now, the PRC passport from Mainland China counts towards this quota (as barmy as that is!), yet they’d like to create as diverse a cohort as possible. They are urging parents to apply ASAP and will conduct assessments on the weekends in December. If they make offers from January (assuming they have the licence by then, which is still pending), I’m not sure how they’ll strive for diversity, but let’s see.

Mark Bishop is acting as Consultant to develop the school in Hong Kong while a search is ongoing for the Head. Mark was High School Principal and Executive Headmaster of YK Pao School 2020 - 2023.

English Schools Foundation (ESF) Open and Close Kindergartens

ESF, Hong Kong's leading provider of international English-medium education, has revealed plans to launch three new kindergartens while shutting two others.

The incoming sites, set to welcome children from August 2026, are in Kornhill, West Kowloon and Sai Sha. Each will serve as a dedicated feeder:

- West Kowloon links directly to ESF Clearwater Bay School and ESF Kennedy School  

- Sai Sha feeds into ESF Renaissance College  

- Kornhill connects to Quarry Bay School  

Meanwhile, ESF Abacus Kindergarten in Clearwater Bay and ESF Tung Chung Kindergarten will close.

Why ESF is reshaping its network

As I see it, this move is fundamentally about optimising enrolments and changing and aligning demographics. ESF faces uneven demand across its portfolio: primary schools on Hong Kong Island (notably those tied to the longstanding Hillside Kindergarten near Bradbury School) suffer the softest intakes, while Renaissance College, Quarry Bay School and the Kowloon campuses remain oversubscribed. By planting new kindergartens in high-growth corridors - West Kowloon’s burgeoning residential hubs, Sai Sha’s expanding Ma On Shan communities and Kornhill’s dense Quarry Bay catchment - ESF is engineering a captive pipeline to bolster numbers in its strongest primaries; its cash cows.

The “direct transition” branding is a marketing masterstroke. Parents value continuity, and the promise of a seamless kindergarten-to-primary path eases the annual anxiety of Year 1 applications. Yet the guarantee is conditional: every admissions cycle sees families with children who have additional learning needs denied the expected place, despite the feeder label. ESF reserves discretion to protect class composition and resource allocation, a clause buried in the fine print but well known to us.

ESF is closing Abacus and Tung Chung for different reasons. Abacus needs to close for renovation and will possibly re-open. Tung Chung, despite its proximity to the airport, has not converted families into long-term ESF loyalties fast enough to justify the campus. The kindergarten opened at capacity in 2016 but had vacancies by 2017. The remaining expats are often mid-income; ethnic minorities (17%) including South Asians and Filipina helpers, unlikely ESF customers. 

Redirecting resources to Sai Sha and West Kowloon - where new housing estates are delivering a steady stream of young, affluent families- maximises return on infrastructure.

In short, ESF is reallocating seats to where future demand is guaranteed, using the kindergarten years to lock in primary enrolment years in advance, all while pruning underperforming outposts.