on-year, with 2,259 applications received for just 1,020 places. Fighting for a place can be exhausting for parents. “Everyone there is looking for a school place,” says Charlotte Douglas about Woodland’s Harbourside Pre-School. Her child studied reception there while waiting to enter Bradbury ESF. While Charlotte praises the kindergarten staff and programme, daily comparing of other pupils’ places on waiting lists, hearing a child has leapfrogged your own to gain a place, or watching as child after child leaves to begin primary school was draining. “It did us fne, but it was stressful,” she says. Charlotte ended up spending 18 months on the waiting list for Bradbury ESF, where her child was number 44, with 43 others ahead of him for any spot that might open up. Less than optimistic about her child’s chances, Charlotte refocused her efforts. It took moving to a new catchment area, making a new application and, Charlotte suspects, a threat to talk to the local press, before

her eldest was fnally granted a place in a different school.

Despite feeling more than happy with the education her children are now receiving, Charlotte wishes the application process had been different. “No one said to us that we’d really struggle. No one told us where we’d be on the list. A year on in, we’d moved one spot,” she recalls. More transparency could have made the process easier, she thinks. At times, she was reduced to tears. “There’s no dignity in begging and pleading.”

A high price to pay

A nine-month wait for a spot in a school broke up Grainne O’Sullivan’s family. Her two girls were happily settled into school in Singapore when her husband was offered and accepted a job here. Rather than apply blindly, Grainne decided to try to fnd a school that ftted with her children’s personalities and Grainne’s own ideals for education, which yielded a short list of four target schools. But she was shocked to fnd a two- or three-

year waiting list at Kellett School. Bradbury refused even a school tour due to over-subscription. She was offered no interview at Clearwater Bay School. Her older daughter, then aged seven, was placed number 65 on the waiting list at The French International School.

The family decided to separate. Grainne and the kids stayed in Singapore and her husband moved to Hong Kong. “It was really hard, because there seemed [to be] no end point. Every week, I was ringing or emailing [the schools]. Sometimes it felt like it would never end.”

Two months in, Grainne’s husband obtained a company debenture, giving the family hope that they would soon be reunited. They were placed number 20 on the waiting list at French International, but it was another six months before her daughter gained entry – ensuring that her younger sister would eventually be granted a space, too – and the family was able to reunite under the same roof. Sometimes only a company

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