Yew Chung: Hong Kong's Oldest Homegrown International School

Yew Chung International School of Hong Kong is the city's first homegrown international school. It was founded in 1932 by Madam Tsang Chor-hang, a time when providing any quality education in Hong Kong required persistence. The school began with early childhood and primary classes, driven by a founding conviction that education should reach beyond the classroom and instil a sense of societal responsibility.

Origins

Madam Tsang opened the first Yew Chung school during one of the most turbulent decades in Hong Kong's colonial history. The 1930s brought political instability and then war. According to the Yew Chung Education Foundation's own history, the motto "Diligence, Frugality, Humility and Faithfulness" guided the institution through the uncertainties of the Second World War and the post-war reconstruction that followed. The school survived; most of its contemporaries did not.

From its inception the school offered a bilingual approach, fusing Eastern and Western pedagogical values at a time when that combination was unusual, even radical, for Hong Kong.

Second Generation, New Direction

Leadership passed to the second generation in the 1970s. Dr. Betty Chan Po-king, Madam Tsang's daughter, returned from postgraduate studies in the United States and assumed control of the school. She introduced the concept of the open classroom and championed learning through play, ideas that were not yet mainstream in Hong Kong. Dr. Chan also expanded the Yew Chung Children's House and Kindergarten to multiple campuses across the city, building the footprint that would support the school's later international expansion.

Becoming a Full International School

The school formalised its international identity in 1987 with the establishment of Yew Chung International School-Primary, setting a structured international curriculum alongside the dual-language heritage it had maintained since 1932. The Primary section grew deliberately, adding one year level at a time. By 1993, the Secondary Section opened, completing a continuous pathway from early childhood through to Year 13. That same year, buoyed by its Hong Kong reputation, Yew Chung opened its first Mainland China campus in Shanghai, becoming the first international school officially registered and recognised by the Shanghai municipal government.

The 1990s also saw the school begin to articulate its co-cultural model formally: every class paired a Western teacher and a Chinese teacher, building bilingual fluency not as a language add-on but as an architectural feature of each school day. Growing numbers of families, local and expatriate alike, chose YCIS precisely because they wanted children who could move between English and Chinese-speaking environments with equal confidence.

Growth of the Foundation

The network expanded steadily in the 2000s. YCIS Beijing had opened in 1995; Chongqing followed in 2001 and Qingdao in 2006. A campus in Silicon Valley launched in 2002. In 2008, the Yew Chung Education Foundation responded to the Hong Kong government's drive to diversify post-secondary education by establishing Yew Chung Community College, giving school leavers an alternative tertiary pathway. That institution was later upgraded: in 2014 it became the first private institution in Hong Kong to offer formal teacher training in early childhood education, and in 2018 it launched a Bachelor of Education degree, becoming Yew Chung College of Early Childhood Education. In 2024, the college achieved institutional accreditation for postgraduate programmes at Qualifications Framework Level 6, making it the first private higher education institution in Hong Kong to offer a Postgraduate Diploma and a Master's degree in Education in the early childhood field.

Curriculum and Accreditation

The curriculum at YCIS Hong Kong is structured around three sequential programmes. In the early and junior years the school runs its own Yew Chung Curriculum, a bilingual framework grounded in the English National Curriculum but built around the co-teaching model. Students in Years 10 and 11 sit Cambridge IGCSE examinations; Years 12 and 13 follow the IB Diploma Programme. The school is a fully accredited member of the Council of International Schools (CIS) and an authorised IB World School. French is available as a third language from Secondary. Students are taught Mandarin Chinese and English throughout, from Kindergarten onward.

Character education sits alongside the academic programme. The school grounds its values work in twelve traditional Chinese virtues alongside Christian principles, a combination that reflects both Madam Tsang's founding vision and the bicultural identity the school has maintained for more than nine decades.

Present Day

Today YCIS Hong Kong operates nine campuses: eight concentrated in Kowloon Tong and one in Tseung Kwan O. The school takes children from six months old through to Year 13, enrolling around 2,200 students who represent more than 30 countries and regions. Its faculty draws from more than 20 nationalities. Dr. Betty Chan Po-king remains Director. On the Kowloon Tong campus, the Madam Tsang Chor-hang Heritage Museum, opened in recent years, traces the school's history from its 1932 origins and holds artefacts spanning the school's nine decades, including ceramic ware from China's Tang dynasty. Student ambassadors run bilingual guided tours of the museum, a fitting expression of the institution's founding purpose.

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