Pui Ching: Application for a new campus has been filed

Kou Kam Fai, the principal of Pui Ching Middle School, confirmed that the school has filed an application for a new campus, but no update has been received so far.

The principal would neither confirm nor deny whether the school will develop in the direction of an international school.

Yesterday, citing a source familiar with the matter, the Times reported that the Pui Ching was said to have a new campus on Coloane. Construction is underway on the land in question, with a diagram showing the location of a basketball field, among other facilities.

The head of the local school admitted that, due to space restrictions at the Avenida de Horte e Costa campus, the school does need more space to expand.

“Seats in our school have been popular in the past years,” he said.

Kou revealed that, on average, the school receives between 1,100 and 1,300 applications for Kindergarten 1 admission each year. “From this pool of applicants, we can only take 168 candidates,” Kou said.

In addition, he said, the Primary 1 level has one more class than Kindergarten 3. “We have four classes in Kindergarten 3, but five in Primary 1, which means that we have the capability of admitting an extra class of students for Primary 1,” the principal explained.

He revealed that the school usually receives 400 applications for Primary 1 level and 200 for Secondary 1 level. The school currently has about 3,200 students in total.

“But the peak figure was 3,400,” the principal added. “We started a tighter cap because there is a requirement for smaller classes.”

Kou said that the recruitment of new teachers is a regular practice. He said the school not only complies with the small-class requirement, but also assigns two teachers to a single class for certain subjects or education levels.

“For example, we assign two teachers to teach physical education to a single class, so as to better ensure students’ safety,” the principal said.

In recent years, teachers have been choosing to retire earlier than required. Kou speculates that this might be because of the Covid-19 pandemic: “in the past two years, more teachers have opted to take pre-age retirement,” he said.

He stressed that the school has been striving to “improve quality of their education,” and that hiring high-caliber and international teaching staff is a way to reach that goal.