Bus Service, Student Passport Details & School Uniform

Please find below some important information about bus provision, student passport provision and school uniform for your information and attention.

School Bus Service 2019 – 2020
As you know, we have been working with our PTSA and ESF Centre to devise and tender a new and more comprehensive school bus network.

The process has been completed and Kong Shing Travel Ltd have been appointed by ESF as the bus providers for students at both Sha Tin College & Sha Tin Junior School commencing from Aug 2019. The bus routes and reservation details can be found on the Kong Shing website. Please go to the ‘School Bus Reservation’ tab at the top of the home page to see details of the bus routes, costs and reservation procedures.

The focus of the tendering exercise has been to enhance route coverage whilst keeping cost increases to a minimum. We were also looking to provide greater flexibility in transport options by providing a number of shuttle bus services alongside the more traditional ‘home to school’ services.

To enable students to reserve a place on shuttle buses from Aug 2019 this will be a pay-in-advance reserved service only. Please note that 2018-19 shuttle bus tickets will not be valid after 28th June 2019. Unused tickets are non-refundable and cannot be carried forward to the new school year. If anyone wishes to use the shuttle service from Aug 2019, they must reserve their seats through the Kong Shing web page and pay Kong Shing directly. Shuttle tickets will not be available at the ICT & Resources Office next school year.

While the shuttle bus provision has been very successful, it was a pilot project that was heavily subsidised by ESF. As such it is not sustainable over the longer term. Parent feedback on the service also highlighted concern for families on popular routes where students did not have a guaranteed seat.

Please note that payment for the bus service must be made by cheque payable to “Kong Shing Travel Limited” and delivered to the school Reception for the attention of the PTSA administrator Candy Cheng.  Any enquiries about payment or routes can be made directly to Kong Shing. We have received several questions today about the proposed new bus service. We hope to add a FAQ – Frequently Asked Questions section to our school website under the Bus Information section by early next week.

A comprehensive and affordable bus service for our students is vital as we move forward in response to requests from the Sha Tin District Council and the HK Education Bureau, for a ‘Bus Only’ transport policy at the Sha Tin Campus. We will be engaging with parents/guardians further on this in the new school year.

Student Passport Details
As you know, the international school sector is well governed here in Hong Kong, with many regulations in place to ensure a consistency of standards and service provision.

One of the regulations that is applied to all international schools to varying degrees is a target ratio for the number of families with ‘local’ passports compared to ‘foreign’ ones. In the case of ESF, this target ratio is 70/30 in favour of ‘foreign’ passport holders.

This target applies to ESF as a whole, not individual schools. As long as we maintain an average of 70/30 across all ESF schools, with the exception of our two Private Independent Schools – Discovery College and Renaissance College, then we are fully compliant with the regulations.

Our colleagues on the ESF Central Admissions team have been looking at our latest figures. While we are still compliant, we are getting close to the 70/30 split, so we now need to take some action.

Rather than changing any of our admissions policies – as you know, we are very proud of the fact that we are non-selective system – the ESF Central Admissions team think that the first thing we need to do is an exercise to make sure that the current data we have on our system is fully accurate and fully up-to-date.

In particular, they want us to make sure that our families at Sha Tin College who hold dual nationality have registered that with us. If this applies to you, it would be great if you could update your profile.

This is a relatively straightforward thing to do. It should only take a couple of minutes of your time. The attached document sets out the steps you need to follow. You begin the process by logging into Gateway.  Then click on Student Demographics and follow the instructions on the attached link.

Link: A guide to entering passport information

If you have any queries please contact our Admissions Manager at info@shatincollege.edu.hk.

School Uniform
The uniform ordering website will be up and running from 15th June. Orders can be placed online or made directly at their store in Lai Chi Kok.

Kind regards,

Principal