From a Sai Yee Street classroom to nine campuses in 94 years

In 1932, Madam Tsang Chor-hang opened the first Yew Chung classroom on Sai Yee Street in Kowloon, adopting the motto 'Diligence, thrift, modesty and honesty.' She was 19 years old. The school's name, Yew Wah, meaning 'bringing glory to China,' had preceded it by a few years; the 1932 iteration took the name Yew Chung and formalised the project.

Origins

The founding years were not straightforward. According to the Yew Chung Education Foundation's own history, the turbulent 1930s and the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong during the Second World War created serious obstacles. Madam Tsang kept the school running. The foundation she built was early childhood and primary education, with a clear conviction, unusual at the time, that learning should go beyond the classroom and instil a sense of societal responsibility.

Second generation, new direction

The school's modern character took shape in the 1970s, when Madam Tsang's daughter, Dr. Betty Chan Po-king, returned from studies in the United States and assumed leadership. Dr. Chan introduced the concept of the open classroom and championed learning through play, reshaping early childhood practice in Hong Kong at a time when rote instruction was standard. She also began asking a more pointed question: what did genuine international education actually mean, and how could the best of Eastern and Western pedagogy be fused into one coherent programme?

The answer she arrived at was the co-teaching model: every classroom staffed by one Western and one Chinese teacher, working simultaneously. Two co-principals, one international and one Chinese, jointly lead each school. The structure is structural, not cosmetic; it encodes the bilingual and co-cultural philosophy into the daily running of the institution.

Expansion into primary and secondary

In 1987, the school formalised its international curriculum with the launch of Yew Chung International School Primary. The institution had grown year-by-year from a handful of founding students. By 1993, a Secondary Section was added, completing a continuous K–13 pathway. The 1990s brought recognition beyond Hong Kong: as the Yew Chung Education Foundation records, success in Hong Kong generated invitations to open sister schools in Shanghai and Beijing, meeting demand from the expatriate community on the mainland. Two more campuses followed in Chongqing in 2002 and Qingdao in 2006.

In Hong Kong itself, the Foundation established the Yew Chung Community College in 2008, giving secondary graduates an alternative tertiary pathway. By 2014, it had become the first private institution in Hong Kong to offer formal teacher training in early childhood education; a Bachelor of Education degree followed in 2018, when the college was upgraded to Yew Chung College of Early Childhood Education.

Curriculum and identity

The Yew Chung Curriculum, written by in-house specialists, draws on frameworks from the United Kingdom, United States, Australia, Singapore, and China. It runs from early childhood through Year 9 and is explicitly bilingual, with Mandarin and English taught as parallel languages of instruction from the earliest years. Students are streamed for Chinese according to language background: Chinese as an Additional Language for those with some Mandarin, and Chinese as a Foreign Language for beginners. French becomes available as a third language in secondary.

At Year 10, students move into Cambridge IGCSE, sitting those examinations in Year 11. The Sixth Form, Years 12 and 13, runs the IB Diploma Programme; the school is an authorised IB World School. Roughly 54 per cent of YCIS graduates earn the IB Bilingual Diploma, a figure that reflects the weight the school places on Chinese proficiency as a measurable outcome, not merely an aspiration.

Accreditation comes from three bodies. The school is recognised by the Council of International Schools (CIS), holds COBIS membership, and is an approved Cambridge International Examinations centre. Character education, built on twelve traditional Chinese virtues alongside Christian values, runs as a formal strand through all year levels.

Present day

YCIS Hong Kong today operates nine campuses: eight clustered in Kowloon Tong and one in Tseung Kwan O. The secondary section is anchored at 3 To Fuk Road, Kowloon Tong. Total enrolment stands at around 2,200 students, drawn from more than 30 countries and regions; the faculty represents over 20 nationalities. Dr. Betty Chan Po-king remains Director of the institution she transformed. The school describes itself as the first homegrown international school in Hong Kong, and no rival claim has surfaced in 94 years.

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