Looking for advice on schools in HK

[LadyPenelope]

Possible move for my family to Hong Kong over the next few months. Having lived in HK before I know a bit about areas/schools etc, but don't have any close friends there anymore and I'm a bit out of touch. Have heard on grapevine that I should get dd on waiting list for school ... but don't think I can do that really until we know for certain we are going, and we know where we will be living. (She would be Y2)
Most likely area to live would be Pokfulam ...
We would be looking at either Kellet or ESF Kennedy. ... but wondered what the waiting lists are like? Can anyone give me a sense?
Also, will it be absolutely necessary to have a place to live before we sign up for school given that the ESF schools have catchment areas. Eg, what if we decided against Pokfulam and did south side or Sai Kung?

TIA for any help you can give.

bumping for the Sunday afternoon HK crowd...

No HKers then?

this is an active honkong expat forum perhaps some ideas here geoexpat

Thanks for that zippitippitoes ... hadn't found that site before and it's very helpful. Much better than the xpatHK one which I couldn't navigate at all!
Thanks

glad it might help..I thought it looked good

I found it originally because exh is in hk

Lucky you! We lived in HK (in Pokfulam) a couple of years ago and most of the info that helped me was from the asia expat website and from the American Women's Association (awa hk). I'm not American, but it's the largest expat organisation that accepts non-US members. They also had a very good children's group with info on schools etc, so it's a good organisation to contact and perhaps join. Most schools did have a waiting list when we were there.

hi there
I live in Discovery Bay and moved here last year.
We found that the schooling thing was a huge issue for us.
I was told that you need to have a place to live before you can apply to a singular ESF school because of the catchment areas. If the school was unavailable, you would be shunted along to the next available school. This horrified me as our older children could have found herself travelling halfway across the island to get to kindergarten...

Is Kellett the ultra private school? I remember that there was one which was totally totally oversunscribed.

In the end, we wanted to live in DB and my husband's company had to fork out for premium debentures to get the kids into school. (I'm not proud of this but am happy that our kiddies are in a good school)

The Hong Kong expat profile has changed over the years. A lot of us have chidren of school age with not enough schools to cover the demand. Hence, more and more premium debanture systems. It sucks and unfortunately again, money talks!

Good luck with your move!