Chinese International School

The short version

The short version

Chinese International School (CIS) was founded in 1983 by three parents — Nelly Fung, Kin-yue Fu and Joyce Tai — as the first school in Hong Kong to offer an international curriculum in both English and Mandarin Chinese.

From about 75 students in Causeway Bay it has grown to more than 1,600 from Reception to Year 13 at 1 Hau Yuen Path, Braemar Hill, its home since 1991: a non-profit, through-bilingual school where every primary classroom has two co-teachers, one English-speaking and one Chinese-speaking.↗↗

For a relocating family, the practical summary is this: CIS pairs the city’s most serious bilingual programme with its most serious prices. Reported 2026-27 tuition is HK$300,300 (primary) and HK$359,200 (senior years) — the highest published in Hong Kong — plus a HK$30,200 annual capital levy unless covered by a nomination right.

At the top of the capital market sits the Corporate Nomination Right at HK$15 million: non-refundable, and depreciating to zero over five years.↗↗

What the school is

Bilingual as structure, not as a subject

Plenty of Hong Kong schools teach Mandarin; CIS is built in it. In primary, every classroom is co-taught by two teachers — one English, one Chinese — at roughly a 50:50 language split, so children learn mathematics, inquiry and literacy in both languages from the start.

In the secondary years the balance pivots toward English while Mandarin remains compulsory, including bilingual history and personal & social classes in Years 7–9. The school’s own curriculum runs in primary, the IB Middle Years Programme in Years 7–9, and the IB Diploma in Years 12–13 — note that CIS is not a PYP school.↗↗

The school’s most distinctive requirement is Hangzhou CIS: every Year 10 student spends a mandatory residential year at the school’s mainland programme, opened in 2013, focused on China immersion, character, challenge and community.

For many families it is the reason to choose CIS; for some it is a reason to hesitate — a full year away at 14 is a genuine family decision, and it is not optional.↗↗

CIS’s community carries a particular prestige in Hong Kong — an alumni network of more than 6,000 spanning law, finance, academia and the arts, and a reputation as the school of the city’s established Chinese and international elite.

It is also still growing: the adjacent 9 Hau Yuen Path site (the former Hong Kong Japanese School) is being redeveloped as a primary expansion for Years 2–6, planned to open in August 2028.↗↗

Academics in practice

IB averages near 39, and a bilingual diploma a third of the world away

School-reported IB outcomes are elite: a 2025 Diploma average of 38.95 with a 99% pass rate, and 39.7 with a 98.4% pass rate in 2024, when 63% of candidates scored 40 or above.

Roughly 28–30% of graduates earn the IB Bilingual Diploma — several times the global rate, and the measurable fingerprint of the dual-language model.↗↗

Admissions match the reputation: the Education Bureau records assessment priority for Corporate Nomination Right holders, siblings and staff children, with alumni children to a lesser degree. Reception applications open two years before entry with a deadline around 1 October; Years 1–6 run 1 September to end-February.

Assessments are bilingual — group play observation and family interview at Reception, written English, Chinese and Mathematics plus oral interviews in both languages in primary, and the IDAT with proctored writing and maths at secondary. Families unable to travel can assess online or at their current school.↗↗

Two things families under-weight. First, financial aid exists: the Education Bureau records assistance for qualifying students aged 12 and above and for enrolled families who hit hardship — unusual at this price point.

Second, leavers’ destinations reported by directories span Harvard, Stanford, Oxford, Cambridge, HKU and Toronto — but read them against the cohort’s starting point: CIS selects hard, and outcomes reflect intake as well as teaching.↗↗

Admissions and cost

The city’s highest fees, and the HK$15 million instrument that zeroes

Fees first. Reported 2026-27 tuition: around HK$216,100 (Reception), HK$300,300 (primary years) and HK$359,200 (senior years) — up from HK$286,600 and HK$342,800 in 2025/26, and the highest published tuition in Hong Kong.

Fees are payable in ten monthly instalments (September–June). New students pay a non-refundable HK$150,000 reservation deposit that includes the Annual Capital Levy; re-enrolling families must pay the levy within seven days of confirming re-enrolment.↗↗

The Annual Capital Levy is HK$30,200 per year for students not covered by a nomination right — itself the fourth-highest levy in the city.

But CIS’s capital market is a menagerie of its own: the school’s site lists four instrument families — Personal Nomination Rights in two vintages (pre-2012-13, and 2012-13 to 2017-18), Corporate Nomination Rights and Individual Nomination Rights — each with its own terms.

Secondary-market rights are reported between roughly HK$5 million and HK$17 million depending on remaining life.↗↗

The headline instrument deserves plain language. The Corporate Nomination Right is priced at HK$15 million, is non-refundable, and depreciates to zero over five years — that is HK$3 million a year of amortised capital, on top of tuition, buying corporate admissions priority.

It is not an investment or a deposit; it is a prepaid, expiring queue-jump for employers who need certainty for executives’ children.

Families should not confuse it with the CNR-named instruments at other schools — and should note the frequent mix-up that attributes this instrument to the Canadian school (CDNIS), whose debentures are an entirely different, closed family.↗↗

Under EDB Circular 15/2023, nomination-right fees like these require Education Bureau approval, multi-year approval cycles and annual use-of-proceeds reporting — the regulatory frame that forces the publication of these terms at all.

If you are offered any CIS nomination right second-hand, deal only through the school’s administered process, obtain the specific instrument’s written terms (vintage matters), and price the remaining depreciable life before agreeing a number.↗↗

The family experience

Braemar Hill life and the demand question

Braemar Hill sits above North Point on the island’s east — green, quiet, and not the most convenient corner of Hong Kong, which is why the school’s bus network matters and why the 2028 primary expansion was planned, in the school’s words, to avoid disrupting neighbourhood traffic.

The campus itself is purpose-built for the bilingual model, down to dual-language signage and libraries.↗↗

On demand, hedge carefully: CIS publishes no waitlist data, but the structural signals — a two-year Reception application window, bilingual assessment gates, and a secondary market in nomination rights that still prices in the millions — point to a school where demand has held up better than the post-exodus market average.

Directories describe Reception admission as among the most selective in the city. Treat all of this as inference; the only reliable answer comes from asking admissions about your child’s entry point directly.↗↗

Who thrives here: families who want genuine bilingual fluency and biliteracy — not Mandarin as a twice-weekly subject — with an IB finish; local and international families who see themselves in Hong Kong for the long term; and households for whom the Hangzhou year is a feature.

Who should look elsewhere: families wanting a Western-curriculum school with language classes on the side, families likely to be posted away before or during Year 10, and anyone for whom the fee level requires contortion.↗↗

Take these to the school

Questions that move beyond the tour script